You Don’t Need to Know Everything
Founders often think they need to be experts in product, finance, tech, marketing, legal—and oh, don’t forget mental health regulations.
The truth?
You don’t need to know everything.
You need to find the people who do.
Give them a purpose. Let them own it.
At Insighte, I built my leadership team by asking one question:
“What do you need from me to do your best work?”
It wasn’t about control.
It was about clarity.
1. Be Absent Sometimes
One of the hardest things for a founder? Letting go.
I used to obsess over every meeting, every pitch, every email.
Until I realized—if everything needs me, nothing can scale.
So I started stepping out of rooms.
Not because I didn’t care—but because my team needed to care without me.
Leadership is not about being indispensable.
It’s about building others who are.2. Build Many Things—But Only If They Have Legs
I’ve built multiple orgs—Insighte, SPOT, ND Founders Club.
I’ve also built some flops. (We’ll talk about those later.)
I don’t believe in "focus on one thing" if you’re someone who gets energy from building.
But here’s the caveat:
Don’t build things that depend on you forever.
Build with structure. Build with co-founders. Build with sustainability in mind.
Side note: if you’re neurodivergent like me, chances are you’ll get ideas faster than you can execute.
Don’t kill the creativity—just park the idea until it’s ready to walk on its own.
3. You’ll Always Be Anxious. Do It Anyway.
As someone with anxiety, I’ve realized this:
Courage is not the absence of fear.
It’s doing the thing even when the fear shows up.
There were weeks I couldn’t sleep before a launch.
There were days I sat in investor meetings hiding a panic attack.
But I did it anyway.
And that’s the real win.
Not the funding. Not the followers.
The fact that I showed up, despite the noise in my head.
4. Believers Will Find You
In 2018, when Insighte was just a crazy idea and a Google Form, I pitched it to 12 schools.
Eleven said no.
One said yes.
And that was enough.
Every venture needs its first believer—that one school, that one therapist, that one investor who says, “I see it.”
You don’t need hundreds of supporters.
You just need a few people who see what you’re building before it exists.
5. If You Don’t Love It, You’ll Burn Out
Mental health is hard work.
It’s emotional, messy, and slow.
If I didn’t love seeing children slowly make progress—
If I didn’t love solving the tough systems problems—
I would’ve quit in year two.
Find joy in what you build.
Because joy is what helps you survive the hard
