The Dark Side Of The Startup World - John Roa - #242

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hi friends, welcome back. My guest today is John Roa, and we're talking about the dark side of being an entrepreneur. We often hear about the galactic success stories coming out of Silicon Valley, how much money can be made by angel investors and startups. We don't actually hear about what sort of an effect that has on the sanity of the people who are running the company. And today we get a really stark, honest and open insight into just what that world is. John had a dissociative psychotic breakdown halfway through running one of the fastest growing companies in America's history. And that particular episode re-centred his view on what matters in life. And this is a really unique opportunity to see exactly what it's like to be operating at kind of the highest levels of growth and the price that people need to pay for that. I've been talking a lot recently about you do not get to take part of someone's life, you have to take the whole. What is the price for being Elon Musk? What is the price for being Conor McGregor? And a lot of the time we can look at these founders and investors and think, oh, I'd love that life. That sounds fantastic to me. And in reality, the price that they need to pay is one that we wouldn't even consider. So, yes, hopefully this helps to give us all a little bit of perspective. And also, we talk about the culture of Silicon Valley and just how completely detached from the real value in the world, a lot of the market sentiment around the valuations of these companies has become. Lots of cool insights to take away from today. And if something resonates with you, then feel free to tell me at ChrisWillX, wherever you follow me in other news. In other news, this episode of the podcast is brought to you by fitbook.co.uk.
Research from the IDEA Health and Fitness Association shows that 45% of health and fitness professionals do not have the qualifications they claim they have. So you could turn up for a session with a masseuse or a PT and find out that they're a mechanic or a hairdresser, which you obviously do not want. fitbook.co.uk are the first company in the UK who provide the public with vetted and monitored health and fitness professionals. Everyone on the site is also DBS checked and their work is monitored. So if you are looking for a new fit pro, a masseuse, a personal trainer or anything else, this is the perfect place to be. And if you are a fitness professional, this is the easiest way to kickstart your client base, to find new clients, to get noticed, and to ensure that you're around other high quality fitness professionals. Head to fitbook.co.uk and use the code modernwisdom for 50% off your FitBook membership if you are a fitness professional. And if you are a customer, you can go and browse all of the vetted and checked fit pros for free. fitbook.co.uk, browse for free if you're a customer or use the code modernwisdom to get 50% off your membership. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful John Roa.
For the people who are listening that don't know who you are, what's your background? How did you end up speaking to me here?

**John Roa** (3:34)
Yeah, so I'm a pretty lifer entrepreneur. I've been in the tech world since I was technically 11 years old when I learned to program code, hack, game, build computers. And then my first company, I started when I was 14 So I'm now 36, so two thirds of my life almost, I've been running tech companies. And it's just been, goes without saying, a passion of mine forever. And kind of before it was in vogue like it is today. I really just had a knack for computers, an interest in being a self-starter and being an entrepreneur, even though I really didn't know that's what I was for a lot of that time. And that journey led to a number of tough lessons, a lot of early failures, all the stuff that you generally hear about when people go through a lifetime of entrepreneurship. And then when I was 26, so 10 years ago, I was in Chicago and was kind of down on my luck. It was not a great time personally and professionally. It was in the midst of the recession globally, but obviously a lot of that was happening here in the US. I was out of work, my parents were out of work, the family wasn't doing great, and I was not really present with a lot of options on what to do to get my life back in order. In the way I saw it, I could either continue to persist trying to make something work that I could self-generate or go get a job and probably work some crappy role for a number of years and try to get out of debt and those kinds of things. Of course, I did the entrepreneurial thing and I created a company called Okta. For those of the listeners that might know a company called IDEO, that's the best way to describe Okta, is that we were an innovation and design consultancy. And companies like IDEO have been around for decades and they've been helping everybody in the world design and innovate on amazing stuff. And I kind of figured there's a room in the market for a pure play digital version of that. Because the IDEOs of the world were all kind of old industrial designers and print designers who had kind of moved to digital somewhat begrudgingly. And I figured if we had a team of kind of thrifty digital only innovation folks that we could succeed in that market. And that's what we did. Created the company in 2010, bootstrapped, no investors, no partners, no investors, no anything. I mean, no board, no mentors, like truly a one man band. And just kind of right place, right time, a lot of luck, perseverance, good fortune, grinding. And two years later, it was the single fastest growing innovation in UX agency in America. One of the fastest growing companies of any kind in America. Two years after that, we had acquired companies, we were growing nationally and internationally. We were doing work for incredible companies. You know, our clients were BMW and United Airlines and others. And ultimately, it was the epitome of that entrepreneurial success story, kind of that just like grinded out till it works kind of thing. And then, you know, we were making money. I'm doing Ted Talks and being photographed for magazine covers. It was kind of this very glamorous success story on one side. And on the other side is what no one knew what was going on, which is also a classic story that I was really struggling personally. I didn't know how to handle the risk and stress and pressure that I was enduring. I didn't have a lot of healthy mechanisms for any kind of support.