The Mental Backlash of Bootstrapping a Business

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Maxing out their life savings. Dipping into 401(k)s long before retirement. For female founders dismissed by Silicon Valley, bootstrapping has become the only option and last resort. But self-funding comes with financial and mental health risks.

never pictured herself as an entrepreneur. But in 2008, after moving to the Bay Area, she had a business idea. Stembel was working as the director of alumni events at Stanford Law, where a big part of her job was ordering décor. “I saw how much we were spending on flowers and went down the rabbit hole from there,” she says. She learned that the e-commerce flower industry was shrinking in popularity among younger consumers.

To Stembel it seemed like a much-needed concept in an industry that was “ready for a little disruption.” That’s when she decided to fund her idea using her own money. “I used the entirety of my life savings,” she says. A total of $49,000. “I gave myself two years to make it work.” But the high-wire act of using personal funds to start a company can create a blurred scenario, where it becomes difficult to untangle one’s individual identity from that of their start-up; how good their business is doing determines how good they feel about themselves. “Self-worth, especially as an entrepreneur, can be closely tied to the business you are building,” says Nina Vasan, M.D.

 

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