Content that scales you
The User Manual for Founder Psychology
Drawn from thousands of hours coaching YC Founders, The User Manual for Founder Psychology contains essays and practical frameworks that help founders build resilience, trust, and authentic leadership as their startups scale.
Send to your Cofounder
The Three Types of Feedback
There are only three kinds of feedback a founder ever needs to drive performance or correct behavior. Three scripts to memorize. Three tools that will make you a superhuman manager. Here they are.
The Founder Sync
Most cofounder conflict isn't a relationship problem — it's a process problem. The Founder Sync is a weekly check-in structure designed to keep cofounders aligned, reduce relationship debt, and actually talk about trust before things get hard.
Relationship Debt & the Level 3 Conversation
Like technical debt, relationship debt accumulates when founding teams avoid hard conversations. And like technical debt, it eventually becomes the thing that kills the company.
Anxious <3 Avoidant: Know your Attachment Style
You and your cofounder fight — that's normal. How you fight is determined by your attachment styles, and most founders have no idea what theirs is. Here's how to find out.
How to Build Trust
Trust isn't binary. It's a fluid that builds or depletes in every interaction. Here's a framework for understanding exactly what creates it — and what quietly destroys it.
Tough Conversation Starter Pack
Cofounder conflict isn't the problem. Avoiding it is. This is a practical starter pack of the most common topics cofounders avoid — and a framework for finally talking about them.
Processing Your Emotions is a Competitive Advantage
Founders are brilliant thinkers. But a psychology that runs entirely on cognition is a single-threaded system — and single-threaded systems aren't resilient. Here's what you're missing.
Confidence
Confidence isn't built by succeeding — it's built by keeping the promises you make to yourself. Here's how to rebuild it from zero, even when self-belief is nowhere to be found.
What It Means to Scale Yourself
"Take care of your mental health" is necessary advice — but for founders, it's not enough. Your startup will demand that you grow, not just recover. Here's what scaling yourself actually means.