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Nils Liedlich

On LinkedIn, every founder has it figured out. But 1000+ convos taught me 90% have business dysmorphia.

The pattern is almost comical at this point.

I travel a lot and speak with ~100 founders every quarter, anywhere from 6-figure solopreneurs to unicorn founders.

I idolize many of them. But here's what surprised me - for reasons unclear to me, almost all of them trash talk their businesses.

With the exception of "costly mistakes I made" or "i used to be broke, now i'm a millionaire" Linkedin posts (which are, I'll just say it, 99% humble brags), nobody talks about this.

The founders often don’t say it in public, but open up privately:

- The biggest agency owners I know told me: “don’t do agency, agency is hard, it’s a shit model”. 

- The founder of a $100M media company told me: “don’t do media, it’s a shitty business model”. 

- B2B SaaS founder: “software is the hardest business model”

- A founder who raised $200M+: “don’t do a VC-backed startup”. 

- PE-founder: “don’t raise funds”.

- ecom founder: "don't to ecom, your rev looks impressive but your margins are shit and the little that's left over you gotta pump back into ads"

- Founder of HVAC-consulting firm: “Don’t do HVAC, it’s razor thin margins”

- $15M event company founder: “don’t do events, they take so much energy to organize”

- Founder who built one of the world’s biggest podcasts: “don’t do podcasts, you build other people’s brands more than your own”

- And then there was Sequoia’s MP Roelof Botha on the All-In Summit Stage saying: “don’t do VC”

Why do you think that is? I wouldn't know.

[h/t Greg Isenberg for introducing me to the term "entrepreneur dysmorphia" a year ago]

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