six: note to self—brush your shoulders off
Early on in your college career, you will discover that you are driven to positively impact the world, specifically, through the advancement of medicine. Not just incremental improvements, but medical moonshots. This is what also convinces you to leave neurosurgery residency training in pursuit of a cure for brain cancer.
As you embark on this mission, remember this: The struggle is part of the journey.
One day, you will receive a request to meet with a new venture capitalist in San Diego at a major conference, and accept despite having traveled up and down the Bay Area and flown all over the United States and the EU for the last six years, pitching HUNDREDS of other venture capitalists, companies, and major investors who dismissed and even ridiculed you.
For that reason, you’ll be cynical about this San Diego trip. But your co-founder will convince you to tackle it together as a team which will lead to a term sheet for funding from the VC.
And even still, you will be wondering whether you’ve wasted those prime years of your life. Who knows what you could have accomplished with all that time? But as Gary Vee says: “Spend ZERO fucks on yesterday.” Channel that energy, funnel it towards your vision—success isn’t a terminal destination.
It takes that mindset and everything else you have to push through these years as you come in to your own, as a scientist, physician, and as an entrepreneur. You’ve fought through worse; keep going.
Another day, ten years after founding the company and despite all the accomplishments, you will feel pulled to pursue even bigger goals, create more impact… even while you realize you are completely burned out. The good news: you still have DECADES ahead of you. The bad news: this will contribute to the end of your marriage.
In that moment you will feel guilt and confusion but you are self-aware and patient. Be grateful for this difficult experience because it is an opportunity for massive growth.
You will leave your first company and spend months give, give, giving—expecting nothing in return. Then, in the midst of a global viral pandemic (!), you realize the past two decades of your life have prepared you for this very moment. A game-changing technology you’ve kept in your back pocket for years finds new significance and with it your second biotech company emerges.
Along the journey, many will ask why you are putting yourself through this. With your medical degree, your neuroscience PhD, and your Oxford and UCSF fellowships that make you qualified to do virtually anything you want—why would you subject yourself to this uncertainty? Why turn down safer, more lucrative offers while sleeping under an office desk for several weeks, deferring your own pay, isolating yourself from friends, eating unhealthy amounts of ramen, listening to endless criticism, and pounding out those self-imposed 100 hour work weeks all in pursuit of some crazy idea? Two reasons:
You will invent a novel drug that could save thousands of lives,
and,
you will do it again.
[This was originally a collaboration with National Car Rental for their 2018 “Note to Self” campaign for entrepreneurs. The above is an updated 2020 version… and maybe I’ll update it every two years from now on! Link to the original article is HERE.]