Building a Company during a Family Emergency

I originally posted the below on Bookface, YC's internal founder platform. After questions from other non-YC founders, I decided to post it here as well.

One year ago, I got the news that two small masses had been found in my 26-year-old sister’s lungs. Soon after, we got the news we feared - it was stage 3 lung cancer.

At the time, Clearly AI was still just me & Joe, and we had just signed Rivian as our first customer. We were all in. We made a lot of sacrifices for Clearly AI, missing close friends’ weddings, and deprioritizing everything else to get this startup to work. How was I supposed to balance starting a company with supporting my family?

I called our group partner Nicolas Dessaigne that night. Without hesitation, he told me that family is the most important, and that Clearly AI would survive as I stepped back to support my sister. I always knew this, but that was the reaffirmation I needed to give myself permission to focus on something more important. So we temporarily moved across the country to support my sister through the gauntlet of treatments and radiation appointments, somehow juggling it all with keeping the company in motion.

My sister is now in remission! I finally have the mental clarity and capacity to reflect on my journey as a founder over the past year.

Some important and surprising lessons from that time:

1. Your company will not die if you put things on pause for a few months. Nicolas emphasized this when I chatted with him. When you've been going at full speed, it's hard to switch gears and not feel fear that this will somehow kill your company.  Sometimes you need to go slow to go fast in the future.

2. Some younger VC partners might not get it. When I told one of our VCs, he was very dismissive. He said “sure, but Clearly AI should still be your focus.” After talking to a lot of other folks in VC, it was clear to me that this is a reflection of him and his lack of traumatic life experiences that fully rip away your mental energy. Tune out the haters. They probably just don’t get it. (Nicolas re-affirmed this).

3. It’s not “996 or failure.” Just because I couldn’t work at full capacity, and was often very distracted, didn’t mean I didn’t make progress on Clearly AI. Most family emergencies stabilize into a “new normal” after some period of time. For us, it was daily radiation appointments and supporting my sister throughout the morning, then taking prospect calls and having heads-down work time during her afternoon rest time and after dinner.

4. Get help. We had our YC seed round in the bank, and used it to hire a friend as a full-time contractor to support Joe on the development side. I hired a Sales Coach to help me make the most of my limited hours doing sales work (and TBH, I needed it anyway - he transformed my messaging/positioning and helped formalize my processes).

5. Being vulnerable can be a strength. I connected deeply with a few prospects because I couldn’t contain my emotions. One became an angel investor in Clearly AI, and the other is still a top “Liker” on my LinkedIn. Both had experienced something similar (loved one with cancer), and my vulnerability allowed us to connect quickly on a cold call.

6. You are not alone. This is (unfortunately) more common than I thought. I thought I was the only one whose young sister got cancer. Turns out as I opened up, prospects, fellow founders, investors all came out of the woodwork to share their stories. My neighbor (founder of a now Series B startup) had a near-identical situation when his company was seed-stage.

7. Every startup journey has road bumps. I was irrationally angry that I was going through this and our competitors seemed like they were sailing ahead. I felt like I had a huge disadvantage. But it was temporary, and road bumps are part of the experience. Fast-forward by a year, now we’ve been winning every bakeoff against those same competitors

   

Clearly AI still grew

We hired our early employees, rebuilt our entire product, and closed 4 more customers (including HID Global, Modern Health, and Affirm). With good planning, I was even able to attend a few major industry conferences to meet with prospects while my sister was in treatment.

I want to post this all because I spent a lot of time searching for answers. Everything I found was focused on the specific illness or issue, as opposed to the meta problem. If you are going through something similar, I am here for you! It takes a village. You will get through this.

A small ask

I learned a lot about rare cancers from my sisters’ experience.  50% of cancers are rare (no known genetic, environmental, or health cause).  On Friday I’m biking for 100 minutes in New York City for Cycle for Survival with my sister.  If every YC founder chips in $5, I’ll blow my $15,000 goal out of the water. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to my fellow founders who have already given.

Even a like/share on LinkedIn can help.  As we all know, visibility can make all the difference.