Self-Comparison is a Waste of Time

You are allowed to be ambitious without having to feel bad when other founders succeed.

Every day you hear about a company hitting a crazy revenue milestone, or raising a huge round on an insane valuation, or just releasing banger launch video that has a ton of engagement. And then you look at your own trajectory and feel bad about yourself.

The voice inside your head sounds something like this:

“They did all that in 12 months. We’ve been at this for more than two years, and we’re still not even close. There must be something wrong with me.”

It’s completely understandable thought. Social comparison is a core part of human psychology. But it’s a logical fallacy and you have to interrupt and redirect it.

The fallacy is:

We’re basically the same person, but they’re much more successful than me. Therefore I’m defective.

But is that first part true? What would need to be different for you to actually be that person?

• Where were they born?
• Where did they grow up?
• What were they exposed to as a kid?
• What space is their company in?
• What problem are they solving?
• Who are their cofounders?
• What skills do they all have?
• What networks are they a part of?

Once you start looking at the details you realized just because someone is also technical, in their late twenties and did YC doesn’t mean you’re remotely the same.

Sometimes I think “My first startup, Ridejoy, could have been Uber, or maybe Lyft.”

Tempting, but false.

Travis already had an exit under his belt and built Uber as a joke app for his friends. Lyft had a team building in ridesharing for three years as Zimride before pivoting. And none of us three founders had any mobile development capability so we had to recruit for that (this was back in 2011).

Maybe that sounds like cope to you.

I freely admit that we made plenty of unforced errors and gave up too soon. But I also know the idea that if I just tried harder, was smarter or more bold, that we could have been one of the top ridesharing companies—is dumb.

Because before startups I was a nationally competitive gymnast. There, this lesson is a lot more clear.

Sure, McKayla Maroney sitting down her second vault at London 2012 and still getting silver—she gets to say "I could have gotten gold if only"

But the counterpoint:

It's obvious to me that Simone Biles had generational talent and genetics that made her perfectly suited to dominate the sport for a decade.

I’m not saying it was easy, getting abandoned by your parents, going into foster care, etc. But she ultimately got parental figures who were able to help her reach her full potential.

If you were a female gymnast between 2013-2024, it didn’t matter how hard you worked or how awesome your coach was, if Simone was competing, you were not winning.

Does that make all the other top gymnasts during that time losers?

Rebeca Andrade, Angelina Melnikova, Morgan Hurd—should they spend time feeling bad about themselves for not being the most decorated gymnast of all time?

No, it'd be pointless. They were great, but Simone was better.

So why would you do it to yourself?

Every sport has an element of luck. And startups are 100x more stochastic than sports. YC has produced something like 132 unicorns, out of 5,500+ companies funded. That’s a mere 2.4% out of an already elite pool of top founders.

This shit is hard. Your mental well-being is precious, and not to be wasted with could’s, would’s, and should’s.

Some kinds of comparisons are inevitable: customers compare competitive products, employees compare job offers, investors compare portfolio co’s. You will have to compare and be compared to succeed.

But those comparisons are about getting information to make a better decision. That’s constructive.

Your negative self-comparison to some hotshot founder is just internalized shame. Not constructive.

Maybe you think self-loathing can motivate you to work harder. And it can, for a little while, like how eating a candy bar gives you energy in the short term, but makes you fat in the long term.

The most mentally healthy founders have an autonomous source of motivation. We actually have data on this from the Founder Mental Health Survey.

I’m not saying don’t be ambitious.

I’m saying your ambition shouldn’t have a yardstick against people who are not you.

Your ambition should be about building the best company you can build. About being the best founder you can be. And the great thing is that no one knows what that is yet. You get to define that for yourself and that’s the only thing that really matters.

Because you aren’t anyone else. You never were and you never will be. So there’s no point comparing yourself to them.