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As a founder, one of my favorite hobbies is learning about how other founders launched their businesses.
Of course, by the time I read their book or listen to them on a podcast, they’ve already made it. The narrative of their evolution has already been written, and they can recount their early days — and attendant struggles — with the calm remove of someone who knows the hardest part is behind them. That changes everything about how it sounds.
When you hear Howard Schultz describe pitching Starbucks to investors, he’s already Howard Schultz — and had been for a long time. The same goes for Brian Chesky, who now runs an $80 billion company and can afford to laugh about the five consecutive rejections he got in 2008. But underneath the polished anecdotes, worn as lightly as their luxury sport coats, lies a darker truth. Not every founder suffers from imposter syndrome — just 84% of us, according to one highly cited statistic. The truth is, before (almost) every founder achieved success, they were someone else entirely: unsure, full of doubt and sure their product would fail.
Why entrepreneurs catch imposter syndrome
I feel qualified to write about entrepreneurial imposter syndrome because I suffered from it myself. Right before I launched Jotform, I was plagued by a sudden-onset bout of panic and dread. My visions of failing were dramatic; the stuff of grade school nightmares. “Jotform — More Like Joke-form,” TechCrunch would sneer.
That never came to pass, obviously. But the fear was real, and it wasn’t irrational. Starting a company means stepping into a role you have never held before, making decisions you have never made before and asking other people to trust you before they have much reason to. It’s a lot to ask — of course, it produces doubt.
It’s no coincidence that the psychologists who first identified imposter syndrome in 1978 noticed it most acutely among high achievers: People with every external marker of competence who still couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d fooled everyone and were about to be found out.
Founders, almost by definition, are exactly this kind of person. You have to believe you are capable of building something that doesn’t exist yet. When you do start, you discover exactly how many things you don’t know — and the gap between your ambition and your current ability suddenly becomes acutely, terrifyingly real.
The good news? There are steps you can take to build confidence, proving to yourself (and others) that you’re the real deal.
Laying the groundwork
Starting a business is about a lot more than the product. It requires a genuine understanding of the landscape you’re building in — that means being up-to-date on the current trends, the competition and the gaps in the market. There’s an important distinction worth making here: imposter syndrome is the unfounded fear that you’re not good enough. It’s different from the very fundamental concern that you haven’t done your homework.
So, do your homework. Get involved in the communities relevant to your business — for me, that meant reading and posting regularly on tech forums. I also started blogging about why web apps — which, back in the mid-aughts, were still a novel concept — were the future.
The blog helped me on a number of levels: It established me as a thought leader in the space I wanted to be in, as well as helped clarify my own thinking on the importance of web apps. By the time I finally launched, I had established trust and built momentum around what I was doing.
Skip the flashy launch — at least at first
I understand the impulse to dream of the splash-making launch that lights up social media. But I don’t actually recommend this. It creates a tremendous amount of pressure to live up to that level of hype — and also creates the perfect environment for imposter syndrome to take hold.
Instead, I suggest making your first launch silent, with just a minimum viable product, or MVP. No bells, whistles or big announcements. The idea is to get your product in people’s hands and see how they use it. Once that happens, listen to feedback: what features would they like to see, and what issues are they having with it in its current form? There’s nothing like user testing to develop a real understanding of your product’s viability, and imposter syndrome is far harder to sustain when you know exactly what the issues are and how you’re going to solve them.
Only when you’ve done your silent launch and addressed the feedback should you plan your marketing launch. You know your product works — now, it’s all about positioning it for maximum impact. Focus on communicating your unique angle, which will make it enticing for influencers to post about and journalists to cover. Publicly launching is always a little scary, but it will be much less scary now that you’ve already launched quietly.
Imposter syndrome may try to creep its way in, but remind it that you’re not anxious because you’ve done the work. You’ve established credibility, released a functional MVP and proven that there’s a demand for what you’re offering. You’ll discover that you’ve developed enough confidence that there’s simply no space left over for insecurity.
As a founder, one of my favorite hobbies is learning about how other founders launched their businesses.
Of course, by the time I read their book or listen to them on a podcast, they’ve already made it. The narrative of their evolution has already been written, and they can recount their early days — and attendant struggles — with the calm remove of someone who knows the hardest part is behind them. That changes everything about how it sounds.
When you hear Howard Schultz describe pitching Starbucks to investors, he’s already Howard Schultz — and had been for a long time. The same goes for Brian Chesky, who now runs an $80 billion company and can afford to laugh about the five consecutive rejections he got in 2008. But underneath the polished anecdotes, worn as lightly as their luxury sport coats, lies a darker truth. Not every founder suffers from imposter syndrome — just 84% of us, according to one highly cited statistic. The truth is, before (almost) every founder achieved success, they were someone else entirely: unsure, full of doubt and sure their product would fail.
