Garry Tan: 5 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Build Resilience

When it comes to building resilience, Garry Tan, CEO  of Y Combinator and founder of Initialized Capital (and class of 2003) recommends entrepreneurs  do the work on themselves as much as on their big ideas.“If you’re not aware of your internal default programming, then it will rule you,” he said. 

Be as dogged in self-care as in your work ethic, and be ready to adjust, Tan told listeners at the SIER Distinguished Lectureship Series in January. “Persistence sometimes leads you down bad roads. This is why we actually really encourage people to pivot…And that’s actually really hard, it requires discernment. We work with so many founders and the failure to be resilient happens in many different ways.” 

Here’s what else works for Tan:

1. Find Your Tribe

“One really important aspect of resilience is finding your tribe or community…You need to surround yourself with people who lift you up and you can be totally real with. Don’t be so worried about being ‘distinguished.’ Don’t worry about the titles, I think it’s much more important: what is the outcome, what do we do for one another?”

2. Let Your Body Talk

“Somatic therapy really focuses on trauma, like where does it go in the body? There’s a great book called The Body Keeps the Score. When I first found out about it, I was very skeptical…It’s very real because it is conflict from outside, within your own body. It’s like a strike, actually.”

3. Be Other-Directed

“Entrepreneurship is very lonely and also not helpful to anyone if it’s making something only for yourself. When founders are not going to make it, it’s often, I am going to solve my own problem, which is needing a startup. You want to be other-directed.”

4. Hot + Cold

“Sauna releases toxins from the body, which is fantastic. And cold plunge is very interesting, because I think that our bodies are so comfortable, we’re so well taken care of by modern society that your body actually kinda needs to be shocked a little bit.”

5. Do the Work

“If you are a better communicator, if you’re more integrated, if you’re more perceptive, if you’re more in touch with yourself, if you’re more in touch with the team – you can hire better people, you make better decisions. You make 10,000 better decisions in the first year.”

Tan encouraged Stanford’s aspiring entrepreneurs connecting the dots between resilience and success. “If you can handle this and be a better person, then your team will be better,” he said. “You’ll make better decisions, your product and service will be better, your business will better, and you will succeed.”