Founder's Notes: The Price of Identity

Written by: YettaS Source: X, @YettaSing

There are always some of the most frequently mentioned self-introduction templates in our industry: "I am one of the earliest people in this industry", "I am a pure technical background", "I am a believer in this track", "I graduated from Ivy League", they seem to be just background information, but unknowingly, they have become the anchor of some people's sense of value, and even a part of their identity.

At the same time, when you are questioned "Didn't you firmly support XX at the beginning? Why have you changed now?" Will you feel ashamed? Do you dare to look back at your black history speeches a few years ago? Can you calmly end a relationship that is no longer valid without denying your original judgment? Can you accept the self who was "not smart enough and not mature enough"?

In today's society, the most easily out-of-control discussions often revolve around these topics: gender, politics and religion. As soon as the topic is brought up, rational dialogue will quickly turn into hostility and division. This is not because these issues themselves cannot be discussed, but because they are highly bound to the individual's identity. Once a certain position becomes part of "who I am", the discussion becomes a trigger of a self-defense mechanism. As a result, the argument becomes defense, logic gives way to emotion, and correction becomes a threat.

In contrast, if you discuss whether DeepSeek's model algorithm is better or whether the Pretraining strategy is more advanced, such topics can also trigger heated debates, but they usually remain at the level of "technical right or wrong". Because everyone assumes that these issues can be verified, updated, and overturned, this is a debate around facts and logic.

Opinions can be falsified, and thus can be corrected; but the self cannot be falsified, so it is difficult to be touched.

This psychological mechanism is particularly critical in the context of entrepreneurship. Whether an excellent founder can quickly adjust his direction in the face of market feedback and failure, and not regard the adjustment as a denial of his self-worth, is often the decisive factor in whether he can cross the cycle and break through the bottleneck. We classify this psychological trait as Low Ego.

Strong psychological core

In our long-term observation of entrepreneurs, we have found that those truly excellent entrepreneurs often do not stand out by relying on a certain talent or skill, but show the integrity and stability of an internal psychological structure when facing uncertainty, conflict and fluctuations. This structure is not reflected by explicit labels or resumes, but is a deep order that runs through every choice and response they make.

We have summarized four particularly critical psychological traits that constitute the strong and flexible core of the founder:

• Low Ego — Low Self-sense

• High Agency — High Autonomy

• Natural Curiosity — Strong Curiosity

• Strong Execution — High Execution

Today, let’s focus on Low Ego.

A type of founder we admire very much: those who have a firm sense of direction but are not bound by self-labels; those who can stick to their beliefs but can adjust flexibly; those who have high self-esteem but are not obsessed with arrogance. This sounds like an idealized personality, but there is actually a very clear psychological structure behind it - Low Ego. They have a very clear but very loose grasp of "who they are".

Defend your views, not your self

The entrepreneurs we want to support are those who can defend their views, not their self. How to observe?

In the process of communicating with the founder, we not only listen to his vision and look at his resume, but also repeatedly dig into a core issue, how he defines himself. Technical routes, industry labels, personal background, these elements themselves are understandable, but once they are regarded as part of the "identity" by the founder, it is easy to form cognitive path dependence. They no longer judge right or wrong, but just defend the fact that "I am this kind of person". Once the belief is challenged, it is more about defending "I am right".

In our Founder Assessment Form, we will deliberately observe the following dimensions to determine whether a founder is prone to ego-driven decision-making:

• Does he frequently emphasize past achievements, especially repeatedly mentioning the early halo

• Does he frequently name-drop or resort to labels in conversations, such as "We are friends with XX"

• Does he habitually interrupt and is eager to defend his position rather than deeply understand the essence of the problem

• Does he tend to rationalize failure after the fact and avoid admitting his own misjudgment

• Is there a single authority dominating the team, and there is no healthy tension to challenge each other

Once ego prevails, the founder's cognition will lose its flexibility. In the highly populist and highly transparent market of crypto, this rigidity is particularly fatal.

We have seen too many founders with beautiful products and smooth financing, but they have never been able to truly unite the community. The root cause is that the founder has "set a position" for himself, which he cannot open to the outside world and will not cede to the inside. There are also some founders whose backgrounds are not gorgeous and whose products are not perfect, but the community is willing to give them time, patience and trust, because they feel a kind of "community consciousness" from the founder. He is not teaching you how to think, but inviting you to think together.

These differences seem to be due to different communication methods, but in fact they are the deeper differences in the founders' self-identification.

When a founder internalizes labels such as "I am a technical person", "I am a fundamentalist", "I have a background in a prestigious school", and "I am contributing to the industry" into his own identity, it is difficult for him to truly listen to feedback and empathize with the community. Because in his subconscious, any questioning of the product direction is a denial of "who he is".

Self-labeling comes from deep fear

Labels should be a tool for external communication, used to allow others to quickly identify your position, profession, background or value proposition. It is a socialized symbol system that is easy to classify and spread. But for many people, labels have gradually become a pillar for building the inner self.

Behind this, there is a deep fear of "self-collapse".

In the past, people's identities were structured and deterministic. Who you are depends on where you come from, what you believe in, and what profession you are in. This information constitutes a stable source of social order and self-sense. But today, with the decentralization of regions, professions, and values, individuals must take the initiative to "construct who they are." As a result, labels have become the most convenient substitute, providing a seemingly certain psychological illusion. You only need to say "I am a technology geek," "I am a liberal," and "I am from a certain university" to quickly gain the understanding, recognition, and even praise of others. This immediate identity feedback will strengthen people's dependence on labels, just like dopamine. Over time, labels are not just tools, but substitutes for the self. Therefore, the more people lack internal order and stable structure, the more they tend to use labels as psychological scaffolds. They may repeatedly emphasize statements that sound like experience, such as the rhetoric I mentioned at the beginning. The real function of these words is not to communicate information, but to build their dependence on self-sense and anchor points for their sense of existence.

They will constantly emphasize their own identity positioning, constantly defend their existing positions, and refuse cognitive revisions, not because they truly believe in a certain point of view, but because once the label is shaken, the entire illusion of "self" will collapse. They are not protecting facts, but protecting the "self" that is collaged from external evaluations.

So Dovey always says: "The most difficult people to communicate with in the world are not those without culture. They are those who have been indoctrinated with standard answers and think that the world revolves around themselves."

Freedom of thought, starting from identity withdrawal

The best founders often show very low identity attachment. This is not because they have no self, but because they have a highly integrated and stable sense of internal order. Their self-identity does not rely on external attachments such as "prestigious school background", "celebrity investor blessing" or "certain industry labels", but is rooted in the internal ability structure: insight into the world, psychological resilience in the face of uncertainty, and the ability to continuously revise their own models in a dynamic environment. They do not use positions, views, and role labels as anchors for their self-worth. On the contrary, the stronger the sense of identity, the easier it is for thoughts to be framed by it. When you are afraid of "overthrowing your past self", you begin to build walls and set limits on cognition. You will care more about how others evaluate your "consistency" rather than whether your judgment today is correct. So you start to find reasons for your old views instead of looking for solutions to reality. This is the most dangerous blind spot in strategic judgment. True cognitive evolution starts with admitting that "I am not what I said in the past". A free-thinking individual does not need to say "I am type X but also understand Y", but completely let go of the psychological dependence of "I must be type X". They can change without anxiety and update without panic.

Only when you no longer rely on labels to stabilize your self-awareness and truly have an inner sense of control over "who you are", can you loosen your obsession, break away from your role, and enter a free thinking space. Perhaps this is the starting point of the so-called "no self" in Buddhism: it is not to dissolve existence, but to allow cognition and action to no longer be hijacked by the self.