Midnight Text: "I’m worried that my entire identity is my company"

👋 Hi, it’s Neal, and I’m here with a 🔥 edition of The Midnight Text, Forum Ventures’ bi-weekly newsletter that provides honest answers to the unspoken questions that keep founders awake at night.

I’m a Managing Director at Forum Ventures, guiding portfolio founders on the zero to one journey. I am a 2x B2B SaaS founder, and I grew my previous startup to $5M+ in ARR and raised over $30M in capital. I am an engineer by trade and an ultra-generalist in practice. For more stories like this one, please follow me on LinkedIn and subscribe to my upcoming newsletter, The Founder Journal.

Up today: The founder identity crisis.

Recently, a founder in our portfolio came to me upset: “Neal, I’m really worried that my entire identity is my company. It has seeped into every aspect of my personal life, and is now affecting my relationships, health, and even my marriage.”

Does this sound like you?

First off, let me say: you are not alone. I have been there, and my world felt like it was crumbling around me.

I came into building my company: young, hungry, and with pure naivety.

I walked out of my business: broken, tired, and not sure what I even liked or disliked.

The more founders I speak with, the more I realize that everyone goes through some sense of this.

When I was running my company, I prided myself on my maniacal focus. I said “no” to everything that didn’t drive the business forward. But that tunnel vision came at a cost.

One of my partners just recently said something to me after I left my last startup that stopped me in my tracks:

"When I met you, your company and you were one. You didn’t have an identity outside of it."

At first, I felt proud.

Isn’t that what’s required to build something great? But then it hit me.

In my pursuit of building the company, I had neglected my health, relationships, and milestones in life I’ll never get back. I wasn’t “Neal”, I was just “a founder”....I was my company.

And when it succeeded, I felt like I mattered. When it struggled, I felt like a failure. How the company was directly correlated to my mental and physical state, so my hands were not on the wheel of my own life.

Here’s the hard truth: this isn’t sustainable.

Building a company is a marathon, not a sprint. If you burn yourself out—physically, mentally, or emotionally—you’re not doing your company any favors.

So, what can you do?

3 Steps to Protect Your Personal Identity When You’re a Founder

1. Turn off all of your devices and media, and go sit down to reflect with a pen. Answer this one question: If your company vanished overnight, what people, things, and domains of your life bring you energy?

The people you’d call, the hobbies you’d dive into, the values that make you you. Founding a company can consume you if you let it—but stepping back and identifying what fuels you outside of work isn’t just grounding, it’s essential.

2. Take those items and carve out a schedule to prioritize them. Will it be daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly?

Knowing what matters is one thing—making space for it is another. Whether it’s daily workouts, weekly dinners with friends, or quarterly trips that reset your perspective, put it on the calendar like you would an investor meeting. Life outside your startup isn’t a distraction; it’s what keeps you sharp. If we plan our business, why not plan our daily lives?

3. As you say “no” things in business, begin to say “no” to things that impede on your personal time and priorities.

You’ve learned to say “no” to bad deals, misaligned partnerships, and distractions in business. Apply that same filter to your personal life and say no to things like unnecessary travel, for example. Protect your time like it’s your most valuable asset, because it is. Saying no isn’t selfish; it’s how you stay sane and show up fully for what matters.

I want you to hear this: being manically focused is part of the founder journey, but you don’t have to lose yourself in the process.

While you are reading this, you may be wondering what happened to me?

I lost a lot of people along the way. People who I thought were close friends. I lost a few family members through COVID and could not emotionally process that with work. I even lost my close relationships with my family (going from seeing them 6 times a year to once or sometimes none).

I do not share this to say “woe is me”, actually the opposite: seasons of imbalance will happen, but finding equilibrium in other parts of life is possible—even when you’re in the thick of it.

If this resonated with you, you’re not alone. I wish I had done this reflection earlier in my founder journey, but I hope it helps you now.

As always, if you found this helpful, please consider forwarding it to a friend. They can sign up right here.

If you’re an early-stage B2B SaaS founder building something awesome and looking for your first check (or if you know one), learn more about us here and pitch us here.

Stay focused, stay balanced, and you are not alone,

Neal

👋Say hi and tell me your story.

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