The Resilient Founder

3How External Events Trigger Negative Feelings

What brings misery to a founder? Competition? Lack of financing? Market acceptance of product? Or the inability to do a hundred small things required each day?

Stressful life events have a substantial relationship with the onset of episodes of major depression, researchers proclaim, as seen in Table 3.1. A start-up life includes a generous dose of depressive triggers; loss of job occurs by design or default. There is neither a financial cushion nor a predictable drip of a salary each month. All founders have faced financial problems, be it personal or be it payroll. Or legal hassles. Marital challenges are not too far behind.

But here is the counterintuitive part: about one-third of the association between stressful life events and onsets of depression is noncausal, since “individuals predisposed to major depression select themselves into high-risk environments.”¹ Put differently, we throw ourselves into high-risk environments to feed our innate tendencies. Is it the start-up life that leads us to a depressive episode, or is it our predisposition that puts us in such a situation?

Table 3-1 External Events and Depression Triggers

Life Events	Odds that such events trigger depression
Month of event	Three months after the event
Job loss	3.95	N/A
Legal problems	3.81	10.81
Work problems	2.44	2.74
Financial problems	5.85	2.36
Divorce	5.22	N/A
Marital problems	8.39	4.29
Assault	25.36	N/A

(Source: K. S. Kendler, ...