You Should Be in Therapy. Yes, Even If You Love What You’re Building.

Harry Stebbings posted about founders hitting $100M ARR in under 3 years. I asked if anyone was taking care of their mental health. That question got 6,000 impressions. I’m at $232K ARR, building the hardest and most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done, and I’m in therapy every week. If that’s a red flag to you, that says more about you than it does about me.

What’s in This Post

• The Post That Started This
• The Thing Nobody Wants to Say
• Let Me Be Clear About What Hard Means
• The Red Flag Narrative Needs to Die
• What I Actually Get From Therapy
• An Investor Red Flag? Let Me Flip That.
• This Isn’t Just About Therapy
• What I Want You to Take Away

The Post That Started This

Last week, Harry Stebbings, the founder of 20VC, posted something that stopped me mid-scroll. He called it “the uncomfortable truth that most are not willing to accept.” The speed with which you get to $1M ARR doesn’t matter. Finding product-market fit is hard. It can take time. But the speed from $1M to $10M? That matters more than ever. If you don’t do $1M to $10M in two years, you’re no longer a product for venture capital. And once you’re at $10M, you need to get to $100M in the next 24 months.

And look, we all know this is happening. We’re living in it. The pace is real. The pressure is real. The benchmark has shifted from ambitious to borderline absurd.

But that wasn’t what made me stop scrolling. What made me stop was the silence around a question nobody seemed to be asking.

So I asked it.

“Do y’all ever do founder happiness studies? Would love to know how people are taking care of themselves and what brings them joy. This isn’t a criticism btw, I’m genuinely curious if VCs who support founders at these stages help them mentally as well as financially and if they’re genuinely happy.”

That comment got over 6,000 impressions on its own. Which told me something important: people were thinking about it. They just weren’t saying it out loud.

Then I posted about it on my own feed. I said, this is crazy because I’m only at $232K in annual recurring revenue and it’s been the most challenging thing I’ve ever done in my life. The most fulfilling. The most amazing. Nothing about it makes me want to stop. But I’m also going to therapy because I think it’s important for me to take care of me.

The Thing Nobody Wants to Say

Here’s my reality. I’m at $232K in annual recurring revenue. I’ve been building Theanna from the ground up, and it has been the most challenging thing I have ever done in my life.

Full stop. The hardest thing. Harder than anything I imagined.

And also? The most fulfilling. The most amazing. I wake up and I love what I’m building. Nothing about it makes me want to stop. Not the hard days, not the uncertainty, not the moments where I feel like I’m carrying the weight of everything on my shoulders.

But I’m also in therapy. Every week. Because I think it’s important for me to take care of me.

And somehow, for a lot of people, those two things don’t seem like they can coexist. Like loving what you do and also needing support are mutually exclusive. Like admitting you’re in therapy means you’re struggling in a way that should concern people.

That, to me, is wild.

Let Me Be Clear About What Hard Means

Building a company from the ground up is hard. Not hard in the way people describe it on podcasts between sips of coffee. Hard in a way that sits in your chest. Hard in a way that wakes you up at 3am with your brain running through every possible scenario of what could go wrong.

You’re responsible for your customers. You’re responsible for your employees. You’re thinking about their livelihoods, their families, whether the decisions you make today are going to impact them next month or next year. You’re trying to build something with generational impact. Something that outlasts you. Something that actually matters.

That weight doesn’t make me less of a person. It doesn’t mean I don’t love this. It doesn’t mean I’m unwell or falling apart or waving some kind of distress signal.

It means I’m human. And I’m doing something really, really hard.

“You can be thriving and still need someone in your corner. You can be crushing your goals and still have days where the anxiety is louder than the wins.”

You can be a strong, capable, driven founder and still sit on a therapist’s couch once a week and say, “This week was a lot.” That’s not weakness. That’s wisdom.

The Red Flag Narrative Needs to Die

After I posted about my experience, something interesting happened. A lot of founders reached out privately to say they agreed. That they were in therapy too. That they were grateful someone said it publicly.

But there was also this undercurrent. This idea that going to therapy is a red flag. That if an investor finds out you’re seeing a therapist, they might question your ability to lead. That vulnerability is a liability.

Let me say this plainly: Do people really think going to therapy means you’re a walking red flag?

Because if that’s the assumption, we have a much bigger problem than startup growth rates.

Think about what we’re asking founders to do. We’re asking them to build companies at a pace that has never been seen before. We’re asking them to scale revenue, manage teams, raise capital, ship product, maintain culture, navigate market shifts, and somehow do all of it without breaking. And then when someone raises their hand and says, “Hey, I have support for this,” the response is suspicion?

That doesn’t make sense to me.

Therapy isn’t a sign that something is broken. Therapy is maintenance. Therapy is strategy. Therapy is having someone on the other side of the conversation who can give you perspective and an unbiased point of view.

When you’re a founder, everyone around you has skin in the game. Your co-founder, your investors, your team, your family. They all have a stake in your decisions. Which means even the people who love you the most are not always able to give you a truly neutral perspective. A therapist can. That’s the value.

What I Actually Get From Therapy

I’m not going to sit here and pretend therapy is always comfortable. It’s not. Sometimes it’s hard to hear the things your therapist reflects back to you. Sometimes you walk out of a session feeling more raw than when you walked in.

But here’s what therapy gives me as a founder:

Space to process. Running a company means you’re constantly in decision mode. Therapy gives me one hour a week where I don’t have to solve anything. I just get to feel it, talk through it, and let someone help me make sense of it.

Emotional regulation. The highs and lows of building a startup are extreme. One day you close a deal that changes everything. The next day something breaks and you’re in crisis mode. Therapy helps me stay steady through both.

Better leadership. When I take care of myself, I show up better for my team, my customers, and my community. I’m more patient. I’m more clear-headed. I make better decisions. The ROI on therapy is actually absurd when you think about it in those terms.

Perspective. When you’re deep in the weeds of building, everything feels urgent and everything feels personal. A good therapist helps you zoom out. Helps you separate what’s real from what your anxiety is telling you is real.

Permission to be a whole person. Founders are not machines. We’re people. And people need support. Therapy reminds me of that on the weeks when I forget.

An Investor Red Flag? Let Me Flip That.

Here’s what I’ll say about the investor question, because I know it’s on people’s minds.

If an investor tells me they don’t want to invest in me because I’m in therapy, that tells me way more about them than it does about me.

It tells me they don’t understand the demands of what they’re funding. It tells me they prioritize performance over sustainability. It tells me they see founders as tools, not people. And frankly, it makes me feel sorry for them. Because that worldview is lonely and it is outdated.

“A founder in therapy is a founder who is investing in their own longevity. That should be a green flag.”

The best investors I’ve talked to? They want founders who are self-aware. Who have support systems. Who are building for the long game, not burning out in year two and taking the company down with them.

This Isn’t Just About Therapy

I want to be clear: therapy is what works for me. But this conversation is bigger than therapy.

It’s about the idea that founders should be taking care of themselves, period. Whatever that looks like for you.

Meditation. Medication. Exercise. A weekly call with a mentor who has no financial stake in your company. A morning routine that doesn’t start with Slack. Boundaries around work hours. Actual vacations where you don’t check your email.

The world is on fire all the time. It’s unpredictable. It’s scary. And we’re building companies in the middle of all of it. If you’re not actively doing something to take care of your mental health, I genuinely want to know: what’s the plan? Because “just push through it” is not a strategy. It’s a countdown.

What I Want You to Take Away

If you’re a founder reading this and you’ve been thinking about therapy but haven’t made the call: make the call. It doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’re building something hard and you’re smart enough to get support.

If you’re an investor reading this: take care of your people. Ask your founders how they’re doing. Not how the metrics are doing. How they are doing. And if they tell you they’re in therapy, say “good” and move on.

If you’re anyone reading this and you think therapy is a sign of weakness: I hope you reconsider. Because the strongest people I know are the ones who are brave enough to ask for help.

We need to be well. All of us. Not just surviving. Well.

I’m Nomiki. I’m the founder of Theanna. I’m building a company I love. And I’ll be at therapy on Tuesday.

Take care of yourself. You deserve it.