When Su-Kam was at its peak — ₹1,500 crore in revenue, operations across 90 countries — I had hundreds of people around me every day. Engineers, salespeople, finance teams, distributors, investors. My calendar was packed. My phone never stopped.
I had never felt more alone in my life.
This is the uncomfortable truth nobody tells you about being a founder: success doesn’t cure isolation. Sometimes it deepens it.
The Weight Nobody Else Can Carry
There is a specific kind of loneliness that comes with the founder’s chair. It is not about lacking friends or colleagues. It is about being the only person in the room who holds the complete picture — the cash flow crisis that hasn’t hit payroll yet, the supplier threatening to cut you off, the key engineer who told you privately they’re leaving, the product flaw the market hasn’t discovered yet.
You can’t share all of it. If you share the wrong thing with the wrong person, you create panic. If you share with your co-founder, you might destabilize them. If you share with investors, you risk losing credibility at exactly the moment you need it most. So you carry it alone.
During the worst months of the Su-Kam legal battles, I would sit in my office at night after everyone had gone home and just stare at the wall. Not strategizing. Not problem-solving. Just absorbing the weight of it. There is no playbook for that moment.
Why We Don’t Talk About This
Founder culture has a toxic relationship with vulnerability. We celebrate hustle, we glorify the grind, we share highlight reels on LinkedIn. Admitting that you are struggling mentally feels like showing weakness — to your team, your investors, your competitors.
So we perform. We walk in every morning with confidence we don’t fully feel. We answer “How are things going?” with “Exciting, challenging, but we’re making progress.” We learn to smile through cash emergencies and pivot through personal crises.
And slowly, quietly, the performance becomes exhausting. The gap between what you show and what you feel becomes its own source of stress. You start to wonder if you are the only one who feels this way — and that question itself adds to the weight.
What Actually Helped Me
I am not going to offer you a wellness app or a meditation hack. Here is what genuinely helped me:
Finding one other founder who would tell me the truth. Not a mentor in the traditional sense — someone above me with answers. A peer. Someone in the same fire who wouldn’t judge me for being scared.
Separating the company’s crisis from my identity. Su-Kam’s problems were real. But I was not Su-Kam. Learning to hold that distinction — even imperfectly — gave me enough distance to keep functioning.
Accepting that some days you are not okay, and going home anyway. There is a lie founders tell themselves: “I’ll rest when this is handled.” But there is always another crisis waiting. Rest is not a reward. It is maintenance.
To Every Founder Reading This
If you have sat in your office late at night, carrying something you couldn’t tell anyone — I see you. I have been in that exact room.
The isolation doesn’t mean you are failing. It often means you are taking the job seriously. But it doesn’t have to be permanent, and it doesn’t have to be silent.
What is the thing you are carrying right now that you haven’t been able to say out loud? Reply to this post or send me a message directly. I am not asking as a guru — I am asking as someone who knows that sometimes the bravest thing a founder can do is admit what is actually going on.
#FounderMentalHealth #Entrepreneurship
