Try to Stay Calm

Calm the Fuck Down: A Founder’s Guide to Surviving Startups

I’ve long wanted to write a book about startups. The working title? Calm the Fuck Down. It’s a mantra that I’ve needed to remind myself of repeatedly over the years, especially during the Wallaby days, and one that I believe every founder should keep top of mind. I don’t know if I’ll ever find the time to write the book, but this post is my attempt to put that message into the world: staying calm isn’t just good for your health: it’s good for your startup.

Why Calm Matters

Startups are high-stakes games played with incomplete information, limited time, and even fewer resources. As a founder, every customer interaction, pitch, or product launch can feel like life or death. But most of the time? It’s not.

Early on, I thought a single bad pitch would kill our company. In reality, I had to endure nearly 200 investor meetings to close our first round. That’s not hyperbole: I kept count. You think losing one customer will doom you, but there are more customers out there. You worry that one mistake in a presentation will end your career, but most people are too busy worrying about their own slides to remember yours.

Ironically, the worst way to manage these high-stress situations is to get swept up in them. Freaking out helps no one: not you, not your team, and certainly not your investors. Staying calm gives you perspective, preserves your energy, and helps you show up the way your company needs you to: focused, adaptive, and unflappable.

Lessons from Wallaby

Wallaby was the quintessential high-pressure startup. We launched with a wild idea: a universal credit card that would route transactions in real time to maximize rewards. It was a high-risk, high-reward proposition that never came to fruition (although we did make money).

I left my job to go full-time on the company when my wife was eight months pregnant. (Note: not recommended.) We joined an accelerator. We lost co-founders. We almost ran out of money on several occasions. Somehow, we still made it out the other side, selling to Bankrate after three intense years.

Every step of the journey offered a new reason to panic. Here are a few highlights:

• The PR Gamble: After my co-founders left, I threw a Hail Mary and hired a PR firm to hype our product, even though it wasn’t live. That move could’ve backfired spectacularly. Instead, it landed us coverage in TechCrunch and led directly to our first VC check.
• The Live Demo Disaster: We once did a demo at a major fintech conference where I got logged out in the middle. I couldn’t remember my fake account password, and our servers crashed. The only reason the moment isn’t infamous is because the event organizers edited it out of the video.

• The Copycats: A Michigan startup launched nearly the same product the day before we launched. Then one launched in Chicago. Then another in North Carolina. In the span of a month, we went from feeling like geniuses to feeling like we were late to our own party. But we stayed calm, put our heads down, and kept building. Eventually, the other teams disappeared.
• The Almost Pivot: In early 2013, we weren’t seeing the traction we’d hoped for, and investors were getting antsy. Internally, we debated whether we should scrap everything and pivot. But we believed in the mission. We stuck to our guns, doubled down on software, and eventually found a commercial path.

These weren’t abstract lessons. They were lived experiences: messy, stressful, and often humbling. What got me through wasn’t bravado or genius. It was the discipline of calming down and figuring out the next best step.

Tools That Help Me Stay Calm

Let’s be real: nobody likes to be told to “calm down.” I certainly don’t. In fact, telling me to calm down is the fastest way to make me more agitated. But reminding myself to calm down is different, I think it helps.

Here are a few simple tools that I use (when I remember to):

• Breathing app on my Apple Watch: It sounds silly, but a minute of breathing can reset your nervous system.
• Walks: Movement gets me out of my head.
• HALT check-in: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. If I’m off in one of these areas, I try to fix it before making any big decisions.
• “I’ll deal with this tomorrow”: Sometimes the best move is to let things wait and marinate.
• Separating identity from work: This one’s the hardest. I still struggle with it. However, reminding myself that I am not my company is the only way to maintain perspective.

Calm Is a Competitive Advantage

Founders often think that being intense, passionate, and always on is what drives success. But in my experience, the founders who do best are the ones who can remain grounded, especially when things are going sideways.

Being calm isn’t the same as being passive. It means being thoughtful. It means absorbing information without overreacting. It means making decisions based on principles, not panic.

When you show up calm and focused, your team takes its cues from you. Your investors feel more confident. Your customers feel more trust. You feel more in control, even when the reality is anything but.

The Irony of Persistence

One of my favorite takeaways from the Wallaby story is that persistence looks a lot like calm from the outside. People see the highlights: TechCrunch features, a growing team, a successful acquisition, but they don’t see the anxiety behind the scenes. They don’t see the 3 am panic sessions or the spreadsheet full of investors who ghosted you.

What they see is that you’re still here. Still building. Still trying. That’s what matters. If I had listened to every voice in my head telling me it was over, I wouldn’t be writing this post.

So when I say “Calm the Fuck Down,” I don’t mean ignore problems. I mean: see them clearly, act intentionally, and stop letting the adrenaline lead.

Next time you're freaking out, just try to remember to calm the fuck down.