Raise Yourself
Why inner work is the real startup work. On leading yourself before you can lead others.
After 2 years without a physical PIRATE Summit, we came back in 2022 with a theme that surprised even us. In 2021, we had run an online event with 7 topic tracks. One track - #RaiseYourself, covering mental health, breathing, personal growth, finding your why - had more views and engagement than all the others. By a wide margin. Participants cared more about leading themselves than about growth tactics. That was the signal. We made it the theme.
Something surprised us in 2021.
We had just run an online event. The program covered the usual ground: how to build products, secure funding, execute growth strategies, hire well. But we also included a track we hadnāt tried before. We called it RaiseYourself, and it covered things like mental health, breathing techniques, finding your why, personal growth.
It won. Not in a close race. By a wide margin. More views, more engagement, more time spent than any other track.
We didnāt expect that. We spent weeks trying to understand it.
The Internal Cost
Entrepreneurship is sold as a path to freedom. And in some ways it is. But the internal cost rarely comes up.
When you choose entrepreneurship, you choose a path into the unknown. Itās terrifying and deeply fulfilling, often in the same hour. One day you feel like youāve made it. The next, bankruptcy feels real. Thatās the early startup stage, and most founders know it intimately.
What gets less attention is what happens after. You enter a seemingly more stable scaleup stage. The fear of going out of business fades. But the pressure doesnāt. It transforms. Are we working on the right things? Did we pick the right strategy? How do we motivate the team when Iām not sure Iām motivated myself?
And then thereās a layer below that, the one that catches founders off guard because it has nothing to do with the business at all.
Why am I doing this and what for? Is this what I want to be doing in 5 years? I feel like Iām on a treadmill and I canāt find the off switch. What is my definition of success? Am I building the life I actually want?
These are human questions. And in my experience, theyāre the ones that determine whether founders burn out or build something that lasts.
The Missing Curriculum
The startup world has gotten good at teaching the mechanics. Fundraising. Marketing. Product development. Growth. Thereās a playbook for most of it, and the playbooks are getting better every year.
The other half - the inner work - is mostly absent.
Founders need both: the knowledge of how to build a business and the capacity to sustain themselves on the journey. Because thereās a reason so many startups fail, and itās often a human one. The founder runs out of gas. The team fractures under pressure. Decision-making degrades because the person at the top hasnāt slept well in months.
Perseverance, resilience, mental health, self-awareness, inner strength - these arenāt soft skills. Theyāre load-bearing skills. Without them, everything built on top eventually cracks.
Mastering them is much harder than it sounds, and much harder than mastering a go-to-market strategy. It requires you to look inward. To confront the parts of yourself that are running your decisions without your permission.
In my experience, the founders who do this work tend to build better companies. Not because they learn some secret tactic, but because they become better decision-makers. More grounded. Less reactive. More honest about what they actually want and more willing to make hard choices that align with it.
Better Humans, Better Leaders, Better Businesses
Thereās a logic chain here that I keep coming back to.
Better humans are better leaders. Better leaders create better businesses.
āBecoming a better humanā is the vaguest possible self-improvement goal. Most people intuitively know it but have no idea where to start.
I think it starts with self-leadership. You have to learn to lead yourself before you can effectively lead others.
That means understanding your own motivations, your triggers, your blind spots. It means knowing when youāre making a decision from fear and when youāre making one from clarity. It means building a relationship with the uncertainty that comes with the job, rather than constantly fighting it.
Entrepreneurship is a mirror. It will show you your weaknesses, your ego, your insecurities - everything youād rather not see. The ones who look away build companies that reflect those blind spots. The ones who look honestly tend to build something more durable.
A Longing for Something Real
I think the reason that track did so well wasnāt just about the external circumstances, though those certainly amplified it. I think it tapped into something thatās been building for a long time.
When thereās instability around us - economic turbulence, geopolitical tension, social fragmentation - we tend to turn to the only place where we have some control. Ourselves.
And when the external world feels chaotic, thereās a deep longing for something internal that feels solid. Something that isnāt dependent on market conditions or funding cycles.
That longing is wisdom. Itās the recognition that the foundation of anything you build is you. And if that foundation isnāt solid, the structure above it is fragile no matter how impressive it looks from the outside.
The following year, we took this even further. #BurnToRelearn asked: what do you need to unlearn to become the person who can lead whatās next?
After all, you are the captain of your life. Where are you sailing to?
#RaiseYourself was the theme of PIRATE Summit 2022. It followed #RaiseYourSails in 2021 and was followed by #BurnToRelearn in 2023.
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Be kind,
Manuel