At 4 a.m. on Christmas Day in 2016, I vividly remember sitting in my living room with my wife wrapping gifts for our kids, while also communicating with my co-founder, who was the CTO, on Slack. To my amazement, almost the entire team was active on Slack at that moment. The reason? We were getting ready to demonstrate our product at CES, one of the world’s largest consumer technology expos, and they were too embarrassed to fail. Some were putting together the presentation deck and other deliverables, while others were working tirelessly to ensure that the platform was functioning smoothly. Given the level of dedication and commitment that our team was showing even on Christmas morning and my own experience, I couldn’t help but feel confident that we were going to succeed.
There are two types of embarrassment: feeling like you will disappoint your supporters (your friends, family, employees, investors, industry peers, and clients) or feeling like you don’t want to give your “haters” the satisfaction of seeing you fail. The only thing more palpable than the fear of embarrassment is the fear of death.
