The Art of Deceleration

Notes on speed and slowness in the startup realm.

In venture capital, being “always on” is the baseline. Obsessiveness and a willingness to work long hours are prerequisites, and the vaunted ideal of the “10x engineer” percolates across every function. You respond to messages at all hours because capital is never just powder. It is partnership, trust, and reputation. Over time, the long hours become normalized, even valorized. You stop questioning whether the pace is sustainable, because it’s producing results.

I’ve never hit a wall in the dramatic, crash-and-burn sense. But over time, I’ve noticed something subtler: an ambient sense of urgency that rarely shuts off, an itch that encourages reactivity in place of purposefulness. It took a leadership coach and a set of practices I might have once dismissed as “woo woo” to help me recognize the ways in which an overemphasis on speed was confounding my decision-making.

The work began with identifying my internal saboteurs. In the Positive Intelligence framework, these are the mental "gremlins" we all carry. They sound helpful but quietly work against us. For me, it was the Hyper-Achiever, always pushing for the next win; or the Controller, gripping too tightly to outcomes; or the Restless one, hopping from task to task in search of forward motion. (Special thanks to Pete, Kristen and Laura at TalentRise who introduced me to the Positive Intelligence methodology.)

For a VC, many of these are occupational hazards, and every gremlin has its good days. These were the patterns that had helped me succeed, that had granted me the sixth sense that told me when to lean in and when to walk away. But over time, I found they were keeping me from accessing another kind of leadership, one grounded in presence rather than productivity. I felt this pain particularly acutely during the early days of the pandemic, when the switch to remote work deprived my team of the in-person time that we relied upon to diffuse tension and create space for spontaneity.

Coaching gave me language to recognize these gaps. But it was the integration of older traditions, like Stoicism, Yoga, and Ayurveda, that gave me the tools to act on those learnings.

Stoicism teaches us to pause before reacting. To take stock, observe our thoughts, and ask the simplest, hardest question: what is actually in my control? This is the core of the Stoic mindset, what Marcus Aurelius called the dichotomy of control. Simple in theory. Radical in practice.

Yoga introduced the concept of stilling the mind. A focus on not just honesty, but alignment. Was I living and working in a way that matched what I claimed to value? Was I modeling the kind of grounded leadership I encouraged in our founders, or just performing resilience while quietly fraying at the edges? I am incredibly lucky to have a lakeside office one floor below Sky Yoga Studios (Courtney and her team are amazing — do drop by for a class if you can). Life as an investor or founder can be extraordinarily stressful. Yoga and time on the lake have been essential outlets allowing me to calm my nerves.

The science of Ayurveda offered a more embodied lens. I have a high level of pitta—the fiery dosha associated with drive, intensity, and heat. What had powered my career was also quietly depleting it. In Ayurvedic terms, every strength has a shadow. My default response to pressure was to double down and push harder. I also found that not paying attention to diet and exercise, while okay in my twenties, caught up with me in my forties. What I needed was a cooling practice: space, stillness, and rebalancing in all aspects of my personal and professional life.

None of these frameworks are magical. But they gave me a structure for noticing what was happening under the surface and a toolkit to shift my response before bad habits became hardwired.

This shift hasn’t only affected me personally. It has shaped how we support founders. At our firm, we have started integrating these lessons more intentionally. This July, we are hosting a Founder Wellness Retreat, the purpose of which is to give founders a structured space to pause, reconnect with themselves, and make room for clear thinking. Because when your nervous system is depleted, your judgment follows.

We talk a lot in venture about the platform function and the importance of founder support: help with hiring, P/R, product strategy, and capital allocation. But support is not only cognitive and logistical. It is also bodily and affective. It shows up in tone, facial expressions, and posture.

For me, discipline is not just about maximizing productivity, accomplishing more and more. It is equally about knowing when to do less — to be less reactive, to take the time to recenter myself. It’s essential to pay attention to our bodies, as burnout doesn’t always make the most dramatic entrance. It can just as easily arrive on cat feet.