Maria Barrera,
Clayful
Scale the Bright Spots
Startups can address important mental health problems, but maintaining mental health in startup culture is challenging.
Referencing Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book Flow, JetBlue Technology Ventures president Bonny Simi explains how she identifies areas where skills and passions are perfectly balanced. The key, she finds, is the design thinking principle of “flare and focus”: you need to spend some time exploring with a wide aperture, and then focus in on places where passion and skill intersect. Sometimes passion in one area will wane, and taking some time to “flare” will reveal the next passion.