Most founders talk about near-death experiences, but few admit the brutal truth: sometimes the company survives, but you lose pieces of yourself you can never get back.

James Lo had 2 weeks left before bankruptcy, watched a team member become a stalker after layoffs, and wrestled with whether building venture-scale companies requires abandoning your deepest values.

This is his unfiltered reckoning with what it really costs to build.

🧠 What You'll Learn

▪️ How to survive the 48-hour countdown to bankruptcy

▪️ Why consensus-building will destroy your startup - and the conflict framework that saves it

▪️ The hidden psychology of why deep friendships at work become emotional time bombs

▪️ How Sequoia plays a 10-year game most founders never see coming

▪️ Why the "spend money to grow" VC playbook is fundamentally broken in 2025

▪️ The automation-first hiring philosophy that could revolutionise early-stage companies

📖 Chapters

0:00 - Intro

1:24 - Two Weeks From Bankruptcy

4:58 - "We Were Completely Wrong..."

7:45 - The Portuguese Holiday That Nearly Killed Us

10:21 - When Deep Friendships Become Toxic at Work

15:17 - From Hong Kong Activism to Silicon Valley

22:13 - "You Look Down at Your Footsteps, Walk Upward in Flow"

25:16 - Why Activism and Entrepreneurship Are the Same (And Different)

30:47 - The Guilt of Abandoning the Movement

35:20 - How We Pivoted After Raising (And Why Antonio Still Backed Us)

40:04 - How Sequoia Scouted Me for 2 Years Before I Knew It

46:18 - The 30-Person Founder Speed Dating Experiment

50:12 - How to Test Co-Founder Chemistry in Crisis

55:46 - From Consensus Builder to Conflict Embracer

60:21 - Why "Hire Your Way Out of Problems" Will Kill You

65:16 - The Controversial Truth About VC Growth Mentality

70:19 - Building Vision from Personal Problems (Not Top-Down Idealism)

78:53 - How Simplicity Reveals Unexpected Vision

88:00 - The Team Member Who Became a Stalker

95:17 - Balancing Ruthlessness with Humanity

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🔗 James Lo on LinkedIn

Ethos