I'm walking proof that VC $ turns founders into f***ing idiots.

In 2021, I raised millions to build what I thought would be the next dominant influencer marketing engine. Top VCs backed me. I had every signal of success—except the right product.

For two years, I sprinted straight into a wall, blinded by investor expectations, inflated spending norms, and the belief that if I just executed harder, it would work.

It didn’t.

In 2023, staring down my 31st birthday, reality hit like a freight train. My career, my reputation—my everything—was on the line.

I had two options:

1. Die the “polite” startup death investors expect.
2. Pivot and rebuild from scratch—on my own terms.

I chose the second. But to pull it off, I had to rewire my entire psychology.

The VC Brain Hijack

Venture capital doesn’t just give you money. It rewires your brain.

It floods your system with dopamine, distorts your sense of scarcity, and seduces you into groupthink. You start making decisions that feel rational…but aren’t.

Most founders don’t fail because they’re bad operators.
They fail because they lose control of their own psychology.

I know, because I did.

Here’s how to stay in control.

1. Protect Your Independent Thinking

The moment you raise money, you inherit a new reality—one shaped by investor expectations, social comparison, and narrative bias.

You start building what a “VC-backed founder” is supposed to build.
You hire too fast. You scale too soon. You stop thinking from first principles.

That’s authority bias at work—your brain overweighting advice from perceived experts. Add groupthink, and you become blind to your own blind spots.

How to Hack It:

• ✅ Try to kill your startup as hard as you’re trying to grow it. If it survives, it’s real.
  

• ✅ Always hold space for doubt. Extremes—like “this is doomed” or “this will definitely work”—are traps.
  

• ✅ Build an intellectual backstop. Keep a small, trusted circle outside the VC echo chamber.

2. Impose Artificial Scarcity

Our brains are wired for loss aversion—we perform best under pressure.
But VC funding kills urgency. A fat bank account tricks your brain into thinking inefficiency is okay.

I had too much money too soon. My default solution? Hire. Spend. Repeat.
None of it addressed the real problem.

How to Hack It:

• ✅ Create fake scarcity. Raise $10M? Act like you have $200k.
  

• ✅ Give every dollar a job. Pre-allocate budgets. Anything unassigned doesn’t exist.
  

• ✅ Optimize for survival, not comfort. Scarcity sharpens decisions.

3. Avoid the Microdosing Trap

The deadliest burn isn’t reckless spending. It’s rationalized drip spending.

A $10K test. A “light” $120K hire. Another tool. Another experiment.

It all feels manageable. But your brain doesn’t register small losses the same way. Once you’ve spent a little, you keep spending to justify the first decision.

I did this for years.

How to Hack It:

• ✅ Force binary decisions. Go all in, or don’t do it at all.
  

• ✅ Use a pre-mortem: “If this fails, what will I wish I had done instead?”
  

• ✅ Cut fast. Don’t optimize a bad idea—kill it.

4. Stay in Survival Mode

Funding triggers a high. You feel like you made it. You start playing with house money.

This is when sharpness dies.

Your edge comes from hunger. From pressure. From the fear that you have six months left.

Lose that and you start tolerating mediocrity.

How to Hack It:

• ✅ Operate like you're six months from running out—even when you’re not.
  

• ✅ Set do-or-die deadlines. Urgency fuels execution.
  

• ✅ Take money off the table early. You’ll make better calls when survival isn’t personal.

VC Doesn’t Kill Startups. Psychological Decay Does.

The best founders aren’t just operators. They’re psychological athletes.

If you let venture capital rewire your brain, you will repeat the same mistakes every overfunded founder makes. You won’t even realize it’s happening.

Discipline alone won’t save you. You have to design against your own biases.

In 2024, I pivoted the company I nearly destroyed.
I went from accidentally industrializing influencer fraud to building the compliance infrastructure the industry can’t survive without.

You can ignore this. Or you can survive.

Your choice.

And make no mistake:

So long as “Founder” is in my title, I’ll be in survival mode too.

Kaeya