[mrkurt]

Your first point is dead on, although I'm lazy and just go to XOCO in terminal 1 most of the time ...

I think, perhaps, you interpreted him differently than I did on your other points:

2. I don't think he's talking about paternalism, I think he's talking about dealing with very intense, private insecurity about the state of a company. There is something not quite unlike doom facing company nearly every day, and it's incredibly hard to filter actual uncertainties that companies should account for. It's important to be both transparent and conservative with negativity, but not for paternalistic reasons.

3. There's not a special type of person that handles stress better, exactly, there's a special type of stress that comes with trying to start/run a company. And it's not really worth it if you're thinking in pure outcome based terms. As an example, I picked my family up (we have 4 kids) and moved them cross country in August because it seemed like the best decision for my company. It was an excruciating choice in a way that a normal, career based moves haven't been. I suspect anyone could have handled that flavor of stress since I'm not uniquely stress resilient.

x. I think intense word choice can occasionally reflect the intensity of what you're talking about in a way that forced mildness undermines. So why not?

[minimax]

2. I was thinking in particular about this particular paragraph from the OP:

"Early on in my first company I had an employee ask if it was a good time to buy a home. We had less than 6 months’ cash in the bank. I was pretty sure we were going to raise another round of capital. But not sure, sure. I mean you never know if your investors are REALLY going to keep backing you. And you can’t go around telling all of your employees your deepest insecurities about it or you’ll soon have no more of said employees."

He never actually completes the thought (what did he actually tell the guy?), but this isn't some vague insecurity we're talking about. If the runway ends in 6 months without more funding, you owe it to your employees to be honest about it. It sounds to me like he witheld the information because he was worried his employees would leave if he didn't.

3. I think there's a lot of substance and humility in what you've said and I appreciate that. What I meant is more that the OP just smacks of self-congratulations. "Look at me. Look at all this bullshit I put up with. Be like me... if you dare."

x. I think it makes him sound childish rather than intense.

[thisone]

>If the runway ends in 6 months without more funding, you owe it to your employees to be honest about it. It sounds to me like he witheld the information because he was worried his employees would leave if he didn't.

I was in that situation, as the employee. Had a bonus contractually promised to me and a jump in salary, bought the house (luckily it was the house we needed, not the house we wanted). Bonus never materialized, salary bump was less than half of what we had agreed.

Why yes, I am looking.

[nitrogen]

x. I think it makes him sound childish rather than intense.

The definition of what sounds childish and what sounds intense is largely cultural and situational. When you realize that all words are just words, and it's people that ascribe meaning to them, you and your social group can mutually decide exactly what meaning you want to assign to each word.

What makes some words special? Why is it not okay to say some words, but okay to say fun? Truck? Luck? Ship? Brit? Shiitake? Shih Tzu? Witch? Bishop? Custard? Bass? Crass? Aspect? Would you be offended if you heard someone say merde but didn't know what it meant?