2024! It’s thrown a few curveballs, and writing this in mid December, hot on the heels of the Syrian regime collapse, I can’t be sure there won’t be a few more coming our way yet. Whichever way you look at it, a year in which 50% of the world population goes to the election polls, will always be consequential.

For non-AI founders, many have spent 2024 willing the ‘green shoots’ of economic recovery to grow just a bit damn quicker. Sadly, for a record number, it’s not been enough, with more startup shutdowns than ever before. By contrast, AI founders (I mean real people founding AI companies) may have found themselves fighting off investors clamouring to deploy the dry powder they’ve been sat on. To misquote Churchill, ‘never was so much paid by so many to so few.’

If your experience has been more of the former than the latter, then know that you’re not alone. I’ve worked with many founders this year wrestling with the dissonance between what’s been going on in the world and in their companies, whilst putting on a brave face in public.

All of this has me thinking a lot about the topic of optimism, or more specifically what I call ‘relentless optimism’. Optimism on its own feels like a promiscuous partner who might just walk out on you in the middle of the night, but relentless optimism is the kind that sticks around for breakfast. It helps you face the realities of the world, and not just to survive in it but to thrive.

We’re in a time that seems to be calling for us to be tenacious and principled, but also adaptive and creative. A time where we need to embrace the new and the novel, and to go looking for answers in unusual places with different perspectives of what we’re truly looking for.

With so much the world is calling us to do, relentless optimism is the undying hope that things can ultimately get better. That the challenges we face can be surmounted. It is the bedrock on which startups are built.

There is no magic wand that conjures it up. Some will find themselves naturally bestowed with it whilst for others it takes work. I for one definitely have to work at it. The important thing though is that it can be worked at, and in my experience it’s entirely worth doing so. I won’t presume to know all the things that might work for you, but here are some of the things that have helped me this year:

• Maintaining the basics - eating well, sleeping, exercising, time in nature, connection with people.

• A regular meditation practice - basically like taking my mind to the gym to stay fit.

• Switching inputs - I don’t need to bang on about social media. Aside from cutting back on toxic discourse, I’ve found a lot of joy in more actively engaging with the positive things going on in the world (which sadly get less airtime) - whether that’s through signing up to publications like Positive News or attending events like a recent one on bio innovation being accelerated by AI.

• Putting things in context - I’ve found myself more and more drawn into the lessons of history through a lot of reading of books like Factfulness and listening to podcasts like The Rest is History.

• Being awestruck by things - to me, awe is a sense of reverence and an appreciation of what’s good in the world. In this last year I’ve found a sense of awe in experiences like hiking across the French Alps with my Dad, an environment in which it’s hard not to be awestruck, but I’ve also looked to be awestruck in the more mundane. I came across a quote recently from Stripe cofounder John Collison that struck a chord, ‘As you become an adult, you realize that things around you weren't just always there; people made them happen. But only recently have I started to internalize how much tenacity everything requires. That hotel, that park, that railway. The world is a museum of passion projects.”

• Not letting the story take over - you may be familiar with the Taoist parable of the Chinese farmer. It’s something I come back to when apparent setbacks arise. In it, a widowed farmer’s horse escapes; his neighbours suggest this is bad news; ‘maybe’ he replies. The next day his horse returns with six wild horses; his neighbours suggest this is great news; ‘maybe’ he replies. Soon after his son falls off one of the wild horses and breaks his leg; his neighbours suggest this is bad news; ‘maybe’ he replies. Then the army show up in the village to conscript all the able-bodied young men to fight and his injured son is left behind; his neighbours suggest its great news; ‘maybe’ he replies. In the moment, it’s very easy to let the story run away from us, particularly when it feels like something bad has happened. This year I had a company as a client who went bust whilst owing me a 6-figure sum of money. Is it really bad news? Maybe.

• Deepening a sense of inner trust - I believe we are all more creative, resourceful and resilient than we give ourselves credit for, but we often lose sight of that. 2024 for me has involved leaning more heavily into that sense for me and for others.

• Celebrating the wins - the evolutionary wiring of our brains means that we each index heavily on the negative by default. This can result in the ‘wins’ being short-lived or going completely unacknowledged. I’ve loved celebrating the wins this year - that might mean taking on a great new client, or revelling in the successes of existing clients. The end of the year is also a great time to look back on all the wins in aggregate and see just how far you’ve come as a result.

Even with the above I can’t pretend that I skip out of bed every single day; or that I don’t lose sight of these things from time to time. But in aggregate they are the things that help me to cultivate relentless optimism - to see that, despite all the noise, there’s much that’s good in the world.

As 2024 comes to an end and you look ahead to 2025 I hope you can tune into your own sense of relentless optimism.

Wishing you a great festive period and a Happy New Year.

Seb. x

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