29F, IIT & IIM grad. Thought I had it all figured out. Boy, was I wrong.
Post-grad, I went full-on hustle mode. Guru worship 24/7. Gary Vee, desi "entrepreneurs" on Insta - you name it, I followed. Their mantra? Work 20hrs, sleep 4, crush life. Sounded legit to my overachiever brain.
My life became a freakin' checklist:
Rinse and repeat. Every. Single. Day.
Guilt was my constant companion. Watching a movie? Slacker. Attending a cousin's wedding? Waste of time. Celebrating Diwali? Think of all the work you could be doing!
The kicker? Being a woman in tech. Felt like I had to hustle 10x harder just to be taken seriously.
Result after 3 years of this madness?
Guess what: All that hustling led to jack shit.
Now, at 29, I'm unlearning this toxic BS. Realizing success isn't about IIT tags, funding rounds, or how little you sleep. It's about actually living.
To all the desi kids killing themselves over JEE ranks and CAT scores: STOP. Your life is worth more than a percentile.
Success without happiness is worthless. Don't waste your 20s like I did, chasing someone else's definition of success.
Anyone else been through this hustle culture hellscape? How'd you break free?
oh please. another startup founder crying about how hard they have it. give me a break.
you know what's hard? working a real job. 9 to 5, every day, no bullshit about "changing the world" or whatever.
you chose this. all that "hustle culture" crap? you ate it up. now you're complaining? seriously?
and don't get me started on this FIRE nonsense. it's just rich kids playing pretend poverty. try living on a real salary, then talk to me about "financial independence."
you startup types are all the same. think you're so much better than us regular workers. then you burn out and act surprised. what did you expect?
maybe if you'd spent less time chasing vc money and more time in the real world, you'd know how good you had it.
grow up. get a real job. join the rest of us in the real world. it's not that bad once you get over yourself.
Why are you p's in a bunch? Did you not get into IIT or IIM after multiple tries? Or is this the typical male aggression towards seemingly smarter women who achieve more than you?
BTW, most of them really are better than you but seeing the bitterness of your response, I guess you somewhere deep down know that already.
Why are people comparing who's dick is bigger (even though one if the participants here is a woman)? Jobs of both employer and employee are hard, both are choices people make, both are "real" jobs, both have their own sets of comforts and challenges. I don't think the OP even demeaned people with "real" jobs. She just recounted her experience and advised that it's not all rosy blindly following success stories and hustle-gurus. One has to weigh the cons as 95%+ people actually end up shutting shop, burning out and losing out on lucrative careers in the hope of building the next unicorn. And not all of them can become salesmen of their own failure and then sell courses on how to lose ones savings to crypto (Yes Warikoo, talking about you). It's a story that needs to be told as well.
Thanks for sharing your story man. Shows us that its not all only uphill in life, there are downshifts as well
She literally said 29F - wow, there’s casual sexism here also 🤦🏻♂️
man is used commonly, irrespective of gender. here too it’s used as a general term jinyvestor!
looks like you’re itching to create a scene, when there is none. stop with your madeup casual whatever bullshit!
Look, I've been in VC for years. Seen this story play out too many times. It's tough.
We pushed too hard before. Always wanting crazy growth, insane hours. Yeah, we were part of the problem.
But things are changing. Slowly, but they are. Most investors I know now? We don't expect this 24/7 grind anymore. It's not healthy, not sustainable.
Your story? It's a reminder of what we're moving away from. More VCs are talking about founder mental health, work-life balance. It's not just lip service.
To founders reading: Take care of yourself. For real. The "hustle till you drop" era is fading. You need sleep. You need a life outside work.
We're learning. Trying to do better. Stories like yours help push that change.
Thanks for sharing. It matters 🧡
Is it honestly? Still VCs gauge founder dedication via - Let me keep a meeting at Tuesday 8:30AM or Sunday 7PM and see if the founder asks to reschedule. Or saying stuff like - Kyu bhai, why are you still doing WFH. All of "us" have started WFO. Make your employees come 5 days a week and start yourself. If they are coming at 10, you be in office at 9. If they are leaving at 8. You leave at 9. I have seen no such improvements. Of course, I have seen countless podcasts where VCs preach founder mental health, WLB - But never seen it in practice.
@DaringTrain Source: trust me bro?
Your chronic anxiety, non existent social life etc Has got nothing to do with what you did. I am very much example of someone who lived his life in the manner which you regret not doing and still I have this issues... I think a balance is very much necessary....
This hypothesis is interesting. You say, her anxiety has a different cause, since you too had anxiety, even though you did not have similar experiences. So, the hypothesis you have is - "Anxiety has a common cause for you both which she is apparently not seeing yet"
Well then, you are missing the forest for the trees. Don't we all love to bucket things in strict black and white, to make decisions easier? Fact is, anxiety has multitudes of causes. You may, at some layer/level, as you go higher/roll up, think you can generalize and put a label on the common cause, similar to how all rivers eventually lead to the sea.
Might or might not be true, some rivers just run dry, which means we overestimate our capacity to "generalize and taking all the intermediary inputs as they should mean, to form a coherent equation", when in reality we have made wrong assumptions/unconscious omissions
Coming back, this means even though some of her anxiety might be due to the common factor 'x' in you both, 'x' might not impact her as much as it impacts you, and most of her anxiety might be due to 'y' she described above. We are all allowed to have nuances and don't need to conform to common metaphorical behavioural kumbaya expected by society
Why the rant? - cause these generalised statements although harmless at a surface level, cause the sufferers to doubt themselves and spiral down further, whilst they should have been focusing on recovery.
Sometimes we all need to keep in check our egos/fears, which will inturn automatically reduce the barriers to tuning up our empathy that's been suppressed by these doubts, so that we can be aware of our Sampling and Selection biases (or any other for that matter) that cause us to generalize too quickly and unintentionally cause harm
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