It takes one person to start a company, but it takes a village to keep it alive and growing. @syedahmed and I spoke to @jaypugz at @BusinessInsider about the highs and lows of building. It's been a roller coaster of emotions, and I've had peaks of triumph and lows of failure and loss. Through it all, I've learned to recognize that I'm only human, and doing the "inner work" is just as important as the strategy and tactics of building @taradotai. ------- Article excerpt: After moving to San Francisco from Dubai, Ahmed had booked a few sessions with a therapist on his own. "We really had to get up to speed very, very quickly," Masood said, likening the early days of their new startup to a "marathon" and "rollercoaster." While she thought it was cool that her husband went to therapy, Masood was "vehemently opposed" to going herself. That shifted when she attended Leaders in Tech (LIT), a four-day, invite-only retreat for tech founders in California. It was the brainchild of professor, author, and executive coach Carole Robin, who taught a famous Stanford course on interpersonal dynamics called "Touchy-Feely." The retreat, Masood told BI, was all about being vulnerable about the challenges of being tech founders in the past few years: dealing with the pandemic, fluctuating valuations, and mass layoffs.