02/06
Resilience Alchemy


Emotional mastery
Bounce-back ability
Unwavering mindset

What is it?

When is it crucial in a company’s life journey?

Why founders fail

How to hone this skill

01
What is it?

The mental and emotional mastery required to bounce back from setbacks, maintain self-worth,
and sustain a positive outlook to embrace the next unknown challenge.

The mental and emotional mastery required to bounce back from setbacks, maintain self-worth, and sustain a positive outlook to embrace the next unknown challenge.

“The first company I founded was when I was 16. [...] I was organizing music events in schools and I was calling little shops in the city so they could sponsor the whole thing. And 98% of the time they said no. The first time being a founder, I learned it’s part of the game to fail and stand up again.”

Malte Kosub, CEO and Co-founder, Parloa

From our founder interviews, this was the one that was non-negotiable for startup success. Every founder who has made it far has had to withstand setbacks and failures. It’s not necessarily about having exceptional resilience but about having enough resilience to keep going through the inevitable rough patches.

“Lightning Focus is more about training an intellectual muscle, being rigorous, applying frameworks and thinking your way to success. Resilience Alchemy has very little to do with that part of the brain. It’s less cerebral. It's more about emotional grounding – it’s about building your self-worth beyond ROI, net dollar retention, and external validation. That could be through a super strong relationship with your partner, your spouse, with your kids.” Oscar Höglund, CEO and Co-founder, Epidemic Sound.

It’s the ability to roll with the punches – where no setback lingers for more than 24 hours – and to view obstacles as opportunities rather than personal failures. The most impressive version of this trait is being able to apply it not just to yourself, but to your team, keeping the company culture independent of personal ego.

“Things always go wrong in a startup. The market keeps changing. People question your vision. If you can’t deal with that, what can you do? [...] As a leader, if you bring negativity to the team, you influence the whole team. You have to stay motivated, even when things go wrong.”

Michelle Lu, CEO and Co-founder, Vsim

Beyond endurance, setbacks can also be a powerful source of energy and focus. “I thrive on setbacks.
I'm attracted to problems. That's why I'm a horrible investor! But I'm a reasonable operator,” says Thomas Plantenga, CEO of Vinted. “I'm attracted to the stress and tension of problems and setbacks that make me focus and make it easier to know what I need to
work on.”

For Oscar Höglund of Epidemic Sound, it all comes down to grit. “Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer lost 46% of all the points they ever played. So they only marginally got it more right; they got 54% of balls in. But you do it for a long enough time and you're resilient, you become the greatest of all time. [...] As long as you get it slightly more right than wrong every single day, week, month, year, and you're willing to put in the hours, you're ultimately going to win.”

Beyond endurance, setbacks can also be a powerful source of energy and focus.
“I thrive on setbacks. I'm attracted to problems. That's why I'm a horrible investor! But I'm a reasonable operator,” says Thomas Plantenga, CEO of Vinted. “I'm attracted to the stress and tension of problems and setbacks that make me focus and make it easier to know what I need to work on.”

For Oscar Höglund of Epidemic Sound, it all comes down to grit. “Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer lost 46% of all the points they ever played. So they only marginally got it more right; they got 54% of balls in. But you do it for a long enough time and you're resilient, you become the greatest of all time. [...] As long as you get it slightly more right than wrong every single day, week, month, year, and you're willing to put in the hours, you're ultimately going to win.”

02
When is it crucial in a company’s life journey?

Resilience is vital at every stage. Early on, founders need it to push through rejection, failures, and relentless problem-solving. Later, as the company scales, resilience is required to manage complexity, maintain focus, and make difficult, sometimes painful, decisions.

“For me, it really helps that I know that if I don’t make these hard decisions, I’m going to hurt everybody, because I’ve seen that happen. So you need to be hard on the few and make hard calls everywhere. At Vinted, we have little reorganizations almost every quarter. People know it and people lose their jobs and things are reorganized, but it’s always at a scale of four or five people losing their jobs, and it’s painful. Every quarter you take a little bit of pain, but then you don’t have to have the bigger pain.” Thomas Plantenga, CEO, Vinted.

And these rough patches play a role in long-term leadership evolution. “Adversity sometimes also brings a few positive things.” says Cesar Carvalho, CEO and Co-founder of Wellhub. “During the prior eight years before Covid, we were only growing and I only knew one mode. Signing deals. Grow, grow, grow. I had to become a real CEO after Covid, doing a transformation on the business. And I got better. Now I have more scars and way more experience.”

03
Why founders fail

They start off with huge amounts of resilience but burn out, as the inevitable set-backs damage them personally. They don’t invest the right amount of time in both building mental resilience and protecting their own balance. Investment in personal growth and therapy is critical to building and retaining this capability.



“Remove the emotion and go to execution. To me, that’s resilience. [...] Put the problem in context and divide it into different buckets that you can solve. And then you try to have enough self-awareness to really ask yourself the hard questions about each part of the problem and just cut through the crap and get to the solution.” Salma Bakouk, CEO and Co-founder, Sifflet.

It is a superpower to see things for what they are, while staying optimistic and committed to solving the big issues, especially if you haven’t quite nailed it yet. Unless you really understand what you’re up against and what you need to do to overcome it, over time you’ll be a poor allocator of resources, doing too many things at once. A lack of focus is often a function of not fully appreciating that some problems require all your resources and bandwidth.

And don’t mistake competitiveness or success in other fields for the resilience needed to build a company all the way. Running a marathon or climbing Mount Everest are individually impressive, but they don’t make you good at running a company.

“If you really care about the product, it can be very hard to be resilient in relation to building a company because these are two very different things.”

Samir El-Sabini, CEO and Co-founder, Juni

It’s also about being driven by intrinsic, not extrinsic, motivation. Samir, Oscar, and Cesar talked about the importance of being fueled by something deeper than financial outcomes, because you can only get so far chasing a bag of gold.

At first, resilience comes easy. The pursuit of a more comfortable life – having your own place, the ability to travel, financial stability – is something most people are naturally motivated by. But to keep building once you’ve already achieved financial security, you need to attach value to something bigger. All the moreso, because “the ratio of personal cost versus value add in your life is much lower. So you need to have some other reason, like a chip on your shoulder,” says Samir. “You need to really be passionate about what you're building and its impact on people's lives. It needs to be a purpose that you're very, very attached to.”

“I started measuring the number of lives that could change versus investing in luxury A or B. And then that was the point, you know, that things made sense for me. I also surrounded myself with people that are close to my values. So, if you look at my friends, none of them are necessarily in technology but are people I admire for their values, for how they educate their children.” Cesar Carvalho, CEO and Co-founder, Wellhub.

Ultimately, as Samir puts it: “It's important that you love life. Founders that really love life are not bitter."

04
How to hone this skill

  • Topline: Accept failure thoughts as mental noise

    A thought is just a thought. How many thoughts have you had today? 100? 1,000? 10,000? Why should thoughts of failure demand special attention? These thoughts are proof that you’re stepping outside your comfort zone and into the space where growth happens. They don’t define your ability or future; they’re just mental noise, and it’s okay to let them pass.

  • When overwhelmed by thoughts like “I’m failing” or “I don’t know what I’m doing,” remind yourself: “Everyone has these thoughts – they’re normal. They don’t need my attention to fade.”


  • Tony Haile
    CEO and Co-founder, Filament

    “I journal. I think it’s the very best therapy you can do. [...] I'm an emotional person, I get angry or frustrated or something like that – but in the act of writing it out to this other person, who is me, I often find myself taking the other position. And I come out from the end of journaling not just in a calmer place, but having genuinely reframed my own perspective on these things.”

  • Reframe challenges as normal signals of growth

    Thought trap: “Thinking about failure means I’m not cut out for this.”

    Reframe: “These thoughts mean I’m being challenged in the right way. Growth comes from discomfort, not from staying safe.”


  • Salma Bakouk
    CEO and Co-founder, Sifflet

    “Resilience is looking at the big picture and not focusing so much on your shortcomings but saying, ‘If I’m here, they saw something in me.’ And the experiences that I went through in my life led me to be the person that I am today. [...] ‘This is what I know about myself. This is what brought me to where I am today. I know I'm resilient because I've gone through all these experiences.’”

Topline: Accept failure thoughts as mental noise

A thought is just a thought. How many thoughts have you had today? 100? 1,000? 10,000? Why should thoughts of failure demand special attention? These thoughts are proof that you’re stepping outside your comfort zone and into the space where growth happens. They don’t define your ability or future; they’re just mental noise, and it’s okay to let them pass.

When overwhelmed by thoughts like “I’m failing” or “I don’t know what I’m doing,” remind yourself: “Everyone has these thoughts – they’re normal. They don’t need my attention to fade.”


Tony Haile
CEO and Co-founder, Filament

“I journal. I think it’s the very best therapy you can do. [...] I'm an emotional person, I get angry or frustrated or something like that – but in the act of writing it out to this other person, who is me, I often find myself taking the other position. And I come out from the end of journaling not just in a calmer place, but having genuinely reframed my own perspective on these things.”

Reframe challenges as normal signals of growth

Thought trap: “Thinking about failure means I’m not cut out for this.”

Reframe: “These thoughts mean I’m being challenged in the right way. Growth comes from discomfort, not from staying safe.”


Salma Bakouk
CEO and Co-founder, Sifflet

“Resilience is looking at the big picture and not focusing so much on your shortcomings but saying, ‘If I’m here, they saw something in me.’ And the experiences that I went through in my life led me to be the person that I am today. [...] ‘This is what I know about myself. This is what brought me to where I am today. I know I'm resilient because I've gone through all these experiences.’”

Self-coaching techniques

  • Self-coaching

    Practice mental labeling: When thoughts of failure arise, label them: “There’s my fear of failure.” Picture them like spam emails – unnecessary, ignorable, and not worth your time.

    Ask yourself: “If I didn’t take this thought seriously, what would I do next?” and “What’s one small action I can take that aligns with my goals?”

  • After moving forward, ask: “How does letting go of that thought reflect my resilience?” and “What did this teach me about acting with focus and clarity under pressure?”

  • Tony Haile
    CEO and Co-founder, Filament

    “Everyone is trying to do the right thing. And it's just really useful to constantly remind yourself as a way of recentering yourself. Because it's not about not being thrown off; it's about how fast you can recover when you've been thrown off.”

  • Short-term focus

    This week, each time a negative thought arises, label it as mental noise and take one immediate action that moves you closer to your goal. For example: If you think, “I can’t fix this mistake,” acknowledge it, then take one step toward resolving the issue, like drafting a plan or seeking input.

  • Long-term growth

    Over time, this approach builds a habit of treating failure-thoughts as harmless noise, enabling you to focus on what truly matters. By refusing to censor or suppress your thoughts, you disarm their power and cultivate a mindset of confidence, clarity, and resilience.

    You need to build something beyond yourself that can act as the foundation for your resilience.

  • Oscar Höglund
    CEO and Co-founder, Epidemic Sound

    “We’ve got one job: leave the world slightly better than we found it. You need to build some inner sense of ‘It’s OK. I’m doing the right thing. I’m getting 54% of things right.’ [...] That's not logic. That's some kind of emotional, almost religious, feeling that you need to have because your journey is going to be bullshit. It's going to be so much wading through horrible situations which are not going to give you energy. But it needs to be part of a bigger journey that you believe and commit to.”

  • Around that foundation, set guardrails to protect it. “I’m willing to work 9,000 hours and sacrifice 10 years, but I’m not willing to have a poor relationship with my kids, because there’s no re-run,” says Oscar. “So I don’t take meetings before 9am or between five and eight in the evening. But from 8pm to 2am, they’re asleep, and I can work. You need to set those guardrails so that you can protect the things that give you long-term resilience.”

Self-coaching

Practice mental labeling: When thoughts of failure arise, label them: “There’s my fear of failure.” Picture them like spam emails – unnecessary, ignorable, and not worth your time.

Ask yourself: “If I didn’t take this thought seriously, what would I do next?” and “What’s one small action I can take that aligns with my goals?”

After moving forward, ask: “How does letting go of that thought reflect my resilience?” and “What did this teach me about acting with focus and clarity under pressure?”

Tony Haile
CEO and Co-founder, Filament

“Everyone is trying to do the right thing. And it's just really useful to constantly remind yourself as a way of recentering yourself. Because it's not about not being thrown off; it's about how fast you can recover when you've been thrown off.”

Short-term focus

This week, each time a negative thought arises, label it as mental noise and take one immediate action that moves you closer to your goal. For example: If you think, “I can’t fix this mistake,” acknowledge it, then take one step toward resolving the issue, like drafting a plan or seeking input.

Long-term growth

Over time, this approach builds a habit of treating failure-thoughts as harmless noise, enabling you to focus on what truly matters. By refusing to censor or suppress your thoughts, you disarm their power and cultivate a mindset of confidence, clarity, and resilience.

You need to build something beyond yourself that can act as the foundation for your resilience.

Oscar Höglund
CEO and Co-founder, Epidemic Sound

You need to build some inner sense of ‘It’s OK. I’m doing the right thing. I’m getting 54% of things right.’ [...] That's not logic. That's some kind of emotional, almost religious, feeling that you need to have because your journey is going to be bullshit. But it needs to be part of a bigger journey that you believe and commit to.”

Around that foundation, set guardrails to protect it. “I’m willing to work 9,000 hours and sacrifice 10 years, but I’m not willing to have a poor relationship with my kids, because there’s no re-run,” says Oscar. “So I don’t take meetings before 9am or between five and eight in the evening. But from 8pm to 2am, they’re asleep, and I can work. You need to set those guardrails so that you can protect the things that give you long-term resilience.”

Next:
Magnetic Leadership