It’s completely normal to be vulnerable

What a week it’s been! On Wednesday, we hosted the TNW NYC conference here in Brooklyn.

Dennis Crowley (of Foursquare fame), Cal Henderson (co-founder of Slack), Robin Chase (founder of Zipcar), Reddit co-founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, and many more joined forces to present topics based on this year’s theme: Momentum. From revenue to usage to traffic, each presenter touched on certain aspect of company growth. The talks were amazing.

Besides the main theme, another topic seemed to emerge – that behind every company, we all experience the exact same issues.

You might see someone else doing great, and from the outside, it seems they are super organized and have their shit together. And then you look at your own life and see nothing but chaos. The same can be said about your company. It might look smooth from the outside but on the inside, you’re dealing with every issue imaginable, and you don’t know where to start so you can fix them.

Listening to these seasoned entrepreneurs all day made me realize, once again, that every company goes through the same challenging times and nothing is ever easy nor merely an accident. That’s both daunting and frightening, but what a relief! We’re all human and vulnerable and making things up as we go. And that’s completely normal.

This is my introduction text for last week’s issue of our TNW Weekly update. You can read the whole newsletter here, or sign up to receive your own copy.