Lessons in Inner Engineering for Founders to untangle your personal worth from your startup’s valuation
Abhishek (Avi) Agarwal
Life is full of contradictions. This one came where I least expected it. Six months after CV got acquired by CRED, I sat in a coffee shop in Bangalore, feeling like a failure. We had built India’s leading alternative data credit scoring company with minimal capital. Yet, I was ashamed I hadn’t built a unicorn, because that’s the only measure startup culture teaches us to value.
The legacy script we’re handed
Entrepreneurship is built on a rigid story. The founder is cast as a hero with only one acceptable trajectory – raise venture capital, disrupt something, scale at any cost, reach a billion-dollar valuation, and nothing less. This “go big or go home” ethos has morphed from a high-risk investment strategy into a cultural mandate, equating hyper-growth with personal worth. The unicorn obsession rests on a series of illusions – limiting beliefs that feel culturally inevitable but collapse under even light scrutiny. It points to the same uncomfortable conclusion: we’re chasing the wrong game.
Part I: The illusions we chase
Illusion #1: More money is always better
The foundational error every unicorn founder makes is the belief that exponential wealth yields exponential well-being. However, the uncomfortable truth is that our brain can’t process the difference. Two centuries ago, Daniel Bernoulli formalised “diminishing marginal utility” – the idea that money’s emotional impact is logarithmic, not linear. The 2023 Kahneman-Killingsworth study shows that for the unhappiest 15% of people, more income doesn’t increase well-being at all beyond a certain point.
Illusion #2: The exit will heal everything
Founders endure years of burnout-inducing stress on one premise: that the exit – the IPO or acquisition – will provide permanent euphoria and relief. I too believed this. The reality is that The high fades in months, not years. The “hedonic treadmill,” coined by Philip Brickman, describes the ruthless efficiency with which humans adapt to new circumstances. Landmark research on lottery winners revealed that within 12 to 18 months of a massive windfall, their happiness levels returned to baseline. For founders, the crash is even harder. The belief that an external event can permanently fix internal dissatisfaction fuels what researchers call “escalation of commitment” – throwing good years after bad in pursuit of a feeling that will never last.
Illusion #3: Scale equals significance
No company lasts for ever. Nothing does. In reality, we are building an immortality project to escape death anxiety. Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death reframes the entire unicorn chase. Human beings construct “immortality projects” – symbolic vehicles to transcend biological death. Founders speak of “making a dent in the universe,” a phrase that reveals deep-seated anxiety about cosmic insignificance. But it’s a trap of infinite regress. Founders trade their “4,000 weeks” (as Oliver Burkeman calls a human lifespan) for an abstract legacy they won’t be around to enjoy.
Illusion #4: You can beat the odds
Research by Cooper et al. found that 81% of entrepreneurs believe their odds of success are at least 70%. A third believe their odds are absolute – 100%. The actuarial reality is sobering: 75% of venture-backed startups never return capital to investors, the probability of becoming a unicorn is roughly 1 in 1,400, and average founder ownership at exit is around 2% of the company.
Now run the expected value calculation:
Unicorn Path: 2% of $1B = $20M (Probability: <1%)
Small Path: 100% of $20M = $20M (Probability: significantly higher)
The payouts are identical. But the risk profiles are worlds apart.
Part II: What actually drives well-being
Once those illusions fell away, the real question emerged: If scale, wealth, and legacy don’t deliver durable happiness, what does? Founders don’t need to think bigger. They need to think truer. And often, truer means smaller.
Truth #1: Autonomy is the ultimate nutrient
While founders chase valuation, the psychological literature screams that autonomy is the primary driver of well-being. Self-determination Theory makes it clear: autonomy – the feeling of being the author of one’s own actions – is a non-negotiable psychological need. The unicorn path destroys autonomy almost as soon as it secures it. In contrast, founders of small, profitable businesses retain agency, ownership, and the ability to shape their identity. Research confirms solopreneurs have the lowest risk of burnout. It increases significantly with each employee added.
Truth #2: Money works until it doesn’t
The most radical data point in modern happiness research: money does buy happiness, but only until it stops. “Enough” isn’t a philosophical concept. It’s an economic sweet spot where utility is maximised before the costs of stress and complexity take over.
Truth #3: Identity fusion is dangerous
High-growth entrepreneurship distorts identity. 72% of entrepreneurs report mental health concerns. Rates of bipolar disorder among founders are 11 times higher than in the general population. The primary driver: identity fusion, where the founder’s self-worth becomes entirely entangled with the company’s valuation. Thinking small creates a firewall between self and business. It allows for “satisficing” (seeking a good-enough outcome) rather than “maximising” (seeking the absolute best). Barry Schwartz’s research confirms that maximisers – overrepresented in the unicorn chase – are prone to depression and regret. Satisficers are consistently happier.
Truth #4: Ancient wisdom saw this coming
In a small ashram outside Pune, a teacher opened the Yoga Sutras 2.42 for me:
“Santosha – from contentment, supreme happiness is attained.”
For years, I had dismissed contentment as complacency. But the text wasn’t saying “don’t strive.” It was saying: strive for fullness, not for scarcity. Create from wholeness, not hunger.
Buddhist philosophy identifies bhava-tanha – the craving for “becoming,” for the next milestone, the next valuation, the next identity – as the root cause of suffering. The “Hungry Ghost” metaphor perfectly captures the unicorn mindset: a being with a bottomless stomach, always consuming but never satisfied.
The principle of aparigraha – non-grasping – suggests that by letting go of the obsession to maximise, you actually gain clarity on life’s purpose. Sutra 2.39: When you’re steadfast in non-possessiveness, the purpose of your life reveals itself.
What this means for all founders
A year after the journey began, I returned to the same coffee shop in Bangalore. Same table, but as a different person. I no longer believed that happiness lay in exponential curves, but in flat plateaus of stability, enoughness, autonomy, relationships, responsibility, and meaningful purpose.
This insight is shaping my next venture. It won’t be a unicorn. It will be profitable, sustainable, and aligned with who I actually am. Small enough to govern. Wealthy enough to sustain me. Free enough to let me live. Meaningful enough that I never have to apologise to myself again.
This is the foundation of what I call Inner Engineering for Founders – the work of untangling our worth from our valuations, questioning the cultural myths we inherited, and building companies that make us stronger instead of hollow.
There’s no other enlightenment
At some point, every founder must decide which game they’re playing. You can chase a throne in an empire you don’t control. Or you can build a kingdom small enough to govern, wealthy enough to sustain you, and free enough to let you live.
If you choose to rebel against your own ambition, that’s enlightenment. Because ambition is wanting well – wanting truthfully, wanting consciously, wanting in alignment with your own life.
The enlightenment begins the moment you realise that “enough” is not a consolation prize.
It’s THE destination.
The author is the founder of CreditVidya – now acquired by CRED – and through The Deliberate Pause, he helps leaders with lessons in inner engineering through Eastern wisdom.
