How climbing prepared me for being a founder.
My two biggest fears are snakes and heights (and like, murderers, but duh). It might seem counterintuitive, then, that I’ve ended up a rock climber.
Given what I just mentioned, getting up at 3am to hike miles into the backcountry carrying 30 pounds, not a soul to be seen, and scale walls literally thousands of feet high seems like the perfect antithesis to something that would make me happy. But it does. And in a strange way, getting into climbing prepared me better than anything else for becoming a founder.
When I started climbing in 2016 I would shake and sweat on top rope (which means I could only fall ~inches~). It was a huge mental fight for me to learn to lead climb, where I could fall many feet at a time. Climbing outside posed new horrors, like falling onto rock or gear fails. I cried every time we did a big trad climb until this year.
Climbing is a beautiful thing for many reasons. Being close to nature — smearing your blood, sweat and tears all over rocks is certainly close in one regard — figuring out how to solve a route for yourself, and being alone with just your body and soul on a wall gives you perspective that not much else can. When I climb, I have to practice being confident in my strength and abilities. I have to trust my belayer and my gear every time I reach out for the next precarious move.
When we started Segmed and got on the start-up rollercoaster, the fear felt familiar. Climbing taught me how to tolerate risk, how to face the fear of failure, and how to talk myself through scary situations. When we were raising our pre-seed, there were times before we walked into a room full of VCs where I would remind myself, “This is not as scary as hanging from a rope 1000 feet up”. If I had anxiety talking in front of a room full of people, I could breathe through it, imagining that I was mustering up the courage to reach out for the next hold. Climbing taught me daring, gave me confidence, and gave me a toolkit for how to trust myself.
When I started, I didn’t know that climbing would prepare me for so much more. If I hadn’t learned to take risks and put myself in situations that made me uncomfortable, I doubt that I would have been able to stick with the founder life for very long. I used to have a minuscule risk tolerance, but now I know that being uncomfortable is a muscle, and one you can strengthen. The more you practice, the better you get.
Takeaways:
- Practice getting out of your comfort zone
- You can’t predict how your current challenges are setting you up for success in the future
