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The Ultimate Founder Mental Health Stack
Psychedelics, depression drugs, dog walks, training, meditation, Whoop and loads more. šš»āļø

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HOUSEKEEPING šØ
Usually, I write the housekeeping at the very end of writing the entire piece. And itās no different today. I hope you enjoy todayās piece. And maybe even get something out of it. It took some energy to write, mainly just because of the topic, as itās not an easy one to spend a lot of time in.
Itās also 10-12 hours later than my usual posting time because I procrastinated so hard on this one. Anyway, itās all yours now. I hope you enjoy it.

BUILDING IN PUBLIC š
The Ultimate Founder Mental Health Stack
Being a founder is tough. Being a founder and maintaining your personal wellness is tougher. And being a long term founder without taking an above average amount of knocks to the self-esteem, happiness and mental health zones inside of your head, well thatās near impossible.
But the good news is, there are things you can do. With the right amount of support, effort and empathy, any founder can live a happy and healthy life.

If you are a founder, or anyone for that matter, who is currently going through a rough period, todayās piece is not the answer to your problems. What it is though is an unfiltered, no holds barred look into the life of one founder, me, and what I have done successfully and not-so-successfully in the past.
If nothing else I aim for this post be fun, encouraging, and most of all, a love letter to all the crazy ones out there, just to tell you one thingāthat you are not alone.
A quick foray into the data
We know anecdotally that founders go through periods of hell, but what does the data tell us on the matter? One 2015 study by Michael Freeman titled āAre entrepreneurs touched by fire,ā attempts to answer the question.
In this study, 242 entrepreneurs and 93 demographically matched comparison participants took an anonymous online self-reported survey to assess their engagement in entrepreneurship, and their individual and family mental health history. The findings were pretty stark.
Self-reported mental health concerns were present across 72% of the entrepreneurs in this sample, a proportion that was significantly higher than that of the comparison group.
The entrepreneurs were significantly more likely to report a lifetime history of depression (30%), ADHD (29%), substance use conditions (12%) and bipolar diagnosis (11%) than were comparison participants.
![]() ![]() | ![]() ![]() |
*Note: All data was sourced from Michael Freemanās study.
Not only did the studies show a much higher risk of ADHD, anxiety and depression but there was a correlation between entrepreneurship and the ultimate sadness, suicidality. As someone who has lost a close family member to suicide, I have always had a very strong pull towards trying to understand mental health and how to cope successfully as a founder.
My backstory
I grew up in a very small town, with a relatively happy family. School was amazing, I was class clown and the best footballer in the area so growing up I felt somewhat as if I was the centre of the universe and that I could do no wrong.
That did change briefly when I had a health scare in my twenty third year, but even that spurred a positive change in me, opening my eyes to how quickly life can change and leading me to take off across the world with a backpack on my back.
![]() Me on left. | ![]() Also me on left. |
![]() Bolivia. | ![]() Iguazu. | ![]() Zimbabwe. |
This long, unbroken streak of life-is-good-ness lasted until around the year of 2014. I was 28, had come back from my travels and had just taken the step of moving to the city, and starting my first startup, AdventureFit.
The brand was beautiful, the experience was second to none, but we really never made any money. Around three years into AdventureFit, with the writing on the wall that the company was not going to work, a mentor told me that I was āthe most driven founder heād ever seen in 25 years of business coaching.ā
He followed this up by telling me that in this particular case, that was not a good thing. āYou need to know when to quit,ā he told me. This was a skill I was yet to learn and I suffered for it.
Personal debt, insane stress, sleeping on my own couch to rent out my bed for long periods at a time. It came to a head at my best friendās wedding when my anxiety and stress had peaked so aggressively that instead of enjoying the final day of the destination wedding, I decided I needed to lock myself in a hotel room for the entire day. | ![]() Wedding night. |
People couldnāt understand it. I was gregarious, confident, outgoing, and just the night before, I had done a cracking job as best man at the wedding. But I was mentally broken from stress.
But it wasnāt until I had a text exchange with another best buddy of mine that it really clicked what was going on. I had been telling him how stressed I was, how I felt a little bit sad all day for no reason, and that I had this really weird sort of heartbreak feeling.
As someone who had had his own mental health battles, he replied a simple line that Iāll never forget reading; āYep, thatās called depression, mate.ā
Things Iāve tried in the past
After I realised I had depression, then the task was to get rid of it, or at the very least, learn to manage it. Which I have done successfully and unsuccessfully over time. Here is a snapshot of some of the things I have done and how I found them.
Daily meditation. Thanks to rise of wellness, the discussions and destigmatisation around mental health and my general openness to new things I dove heavily into meditation. Sam Harris became my guru and I devoured anything and everything around meditation.
The good news is, I think meditation is great. I feel more relaxed when I meditate, and I did it 4-5 times per week for years. However, I do not meditate right now and I didnāt find much efficacy in countering my depression. Having said that, I didnāt have a control group of meās that were not meditating during the same period, so itās somewhat hard to really know.Cold showers, ice baths, Wim Hof breathwork. Next up, I found the trend of cold showering, ice baths and breathwork, partly thanks to the rise of Wim Hof, and gave that a shot for a long while as well.
I never went deep into the breathwork side, although I dabbled, but I did have a cold shower every morning for a long time. Itās something that Iād love to pick up again to be honest. Not really for mental health but just because it gives you a very invigorating feeling and is great for overall health, mood, circulation etc.
*Below is an interview I did with Wim Hof nearly 10 years ago.
Journaling, gratitude and general. Next was journaling. We have all heard the studies about how much gratitude journaling increases overall wellness. And it makes sense. The best way I had it explained to me was that āHappiness is momentum, the more pleasant, empathetic, and positive thoughts you can have, the deeper the neural pathways become, the easier it is to keep skiing down those wellnessy slopes.ā
I have no idea who told me that and I know they didnāt phrase it in exactly that way but you get my drift. I no longer have a gratitudinal (actual word) practice today.
Psychedelic and clinical experiences
Psychology and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. While I was in Australia, and for the most part of the last decade, I have had a consistent, albeit somewhat stop and start, relationship with my psychologist. Iāve learned a lot over the journey and do value having someone to talk to. Mainly to understand the brain in general rather than my brain per se.
Ketamine assisted therapy. In early 2022, when I was really struggling, and had just left Australia, I heard the founder of Field Trip Health interviewed by Professor Scott Galloway about the benefits of ketamine-assisted therapy in reducing the effects of otherwise treatment resistant depression.
Although psilocybin had not been approved by the FDA in the US this type of treatment was, and I was about to land in the US. With only a few days before heading further south I was able to secure a six-session treatment over the course of a month in their San Diego clinic.
The treatment itself cost me close to $10k + the additional time staying in an Airbnb in San Diego, but it was worth a roll of the dice. The experience itself was quite wonderful. You are given a doctor and a psychologist. The doctor will be the one who recommends how much ketamine to pump into your system every sessionā50mg to start, and up to 120mg to finish for meāand the psychologist is the one who will walk you through the journey.
I could not speak more highly of my experience at Field Trip and although the experiences were challenging at times it was definitely a worthwhile experience. My partner Taina some months later said she had seen a huge improvement in my overall mental health, and she was probably right.

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Psilocybin (magic mushrooms). Out of respect for the sponsors of todayās post I will leave this section out for now, as experiences I may or may not have had were not done in a way I feel right expressing.
Ayahuasca in the Amazon. Unfortunately, following on from some positive effects of the ketamine therapy, and some shiny new depression medication I still seemed to not be able to get into a good place, even for small windows of time.
So in mid 2023, I did something that has been top of mind for me for close to a decade since I began my journey into the darker side of life. And that is, I booked myself to a week long Ayahuasca retreat in the jungles of Peru. This was, what I could only explain as a weeklong waking nightmare.
I walked into the centre with 22 or 23 other travelers, who were all there for one reason or another; lost loved ones, retrenchment, general feeling of being lost in life etc. And although, I felt like I was walking in with a relatively good outlook on life, I walked out of there 10 times more mentally shattered than when I entered.
This was very disappointing and hard to come to grips with. It probably took me three months to fully recover back to my baseline, which was depression.
Why was it so difficult? Well, ayahuasca is like nothing else. I have had what you would call a āHeroās Doseā of other psychedelics in the past and when quite deep during my ketamine experience, but ayahuasca is something unto itself. And if you are on the wrong end of a deep ayahuasca experienceāwhich I was on each and every one of the ceremoniesāyou are in for a night of hell.
I spent the majority of the week thinking I was going insane or thinking much worse things than that. I felt like, for whatever reason, for me, the experience was very counterproductive.
There was also a way the retreat centre ran their program that I thought was insane. Each ceremony started in the evening at 8pm and lasted sometimes until 4am, with breakfast three hours later. I feel like people were irritable and exhausted due to the sleep deprivation they went through during the week. The experience cost around $5k when you add up the program, flights, etc.

Jungle.
Brain scans at Amen Clinic. Next up, following right after my trip to the jungle was to try to seek help from a professional brain care clinic in the US, the Amen Clinic. I wanted to assess the overall health of my brain because I had a sneaking suspicion all of my problems stemmed from an unsuccessful backflip-on-a-dancefloor attempt I made when I was 28. The attempt left my unconscious, soiling my pants and unresponsive for a total of 43 minutes. As I was rushed to hospital in an ambulance the doctors called my parents and told them I was suspected brain damage and spinal injury.
The results gave me good news, irrelevant news, and bad news. The good news was my brain was in incredible good condition for a 37 year old. The irrelevant news was it showed signs of chronic depression and anxiety. The bad news was I was still searching for answers.
*Note: In case you were wondering, that was my one and only backflip attempt in this lifetime. Officially retired from drunken gymnastics.
![]() My brain on depression. | ![]() My brain on anxiety. |
BONUS: Ezra cancer scans. Not exactly mental health related but around this time I decided to drop by for a scan at Ezra, a clinic that has a tagline that reads; āWe found cancerās greatest weaknessāearly detection.ā I thought now that I get paid well enough, I should start proactively looking after not only my mental health but my physical health too.
Two weeks after the scan, I was told that I had a 6 cm tumor in my lungsābut donāt freak outāas I donāt actually have said tumour. It took four weeks, multiple specialists, a three-day stint in a German hospital (oh yeah, we were on holidays), a bronchoscopy and a biopsy for them to tell me that āthere was nothing to worry about.ā
Ezra is awesome, I think. If you can genuinely get ahead of a scary diagnosis like the big C it can and will save your life. But I have also heard mixed reports of the efficacy of the scans and lots of people like me who basically had a bad flu going through hell to find they were actually fit as a fiddle.
I guess the stress is worth it in the end. Cancer is kinda preventable in a way if you get in early. (shrug) The scan itself costs around $3k and is recommended annually or bi-annually.
![]() The report. | ![]() The diagnosis. |


My current stack
Phew, man, that last section, was a kinda heavy. Before I dive into the things I am doing right now to live a happy and healthy life, I want to take a moment to tell you that I actually donāt feel like I have depression today. I still have massive bouts of social anxiety and I bail on a lot of things but I actually feel pretty good overall.
Letās take a quick look into how and why I am able to say that considering everything you just read.
Desvenlafaxina (depression meds). Well, for starters, I am on medication. For the longest time, all the way up until last year, I stayed away from medication. There was one small period in which I was on meds, but my grandpa took his own life after his lifelong medication was discontinued and then changed on him at ~70 years old.
Plus, add to the fact that every study under the sun will show you that meds are about as efficacious as improving sleep, exercising once or twice a week etc. But anyway, I am on them, and they seem to be ok.Brain care pills and GABA. I say brain care pills and GABA even though they are one and the same because I want to really make a highlight of the GABA part. GABA or Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid seems to be an incredible successful way for me to be able to really take the edge off my anxiety.
I mainly get anxiety for social situations, nothing else really. Itās the reason I love writing but hate podcasting. Podcasting just stresses me out. In my younger days I would pull the rower down in my bedroomāyes, I had a rowing machine in my bedroomāand bang out 5km or some 500m sprints to try to blow out the anxiety cobwebs. Today, because I am sin / sans the bedroom rower, I use GABA.
I also use a combination of personally recommended cerebral supplements from the work I did at the Amen Clinic. Every morning, midday and evening I have a combination of saffron, GABA, omega-3 and more.

The good gear.
Sport, competition, weightlifting. For me, I have been very activeātraining and sport wiseābasically all my life. First it was Aussie rules football, then CrossFit for a split second, then weightlifting. The last thing I competed in properly was weightlifting, lifting at the 2016 National Championships as an 85 kg lifter.
I feel like I am happier when I have a goal, and something I am working towards. In 2016, my goal, even though I started weightlifting at 28, was to represent Australia. It was going to be hard because they donāt usually give spots to people who donāt have a long runway in the sport, unless you are the best in the country / world.
Funny thing was, after the 2016 comp, I gave myself the following week off, and then that extended to a fortnight, then a month. And then I didnāt really train hard again, aside from a quick dash into powerlifting, until last year.
Now I have a new goal. My lifetime goal is back on, training towards a 120 kg snatch and a 150 kg clean and jerk. And my looser, funner goal is to be the internetās strongest startup founder.
My goal of being the internet's strongest startup founder is progressing nicely.
Video: my first 100kg snatch in ~10 years.
ā Bill Kerr (@bill_kerrrrr)
4:15 PM ā¢ Aug 17, 2024
Whoop, Eight Sleep, outlet timer. One thing I love right now is my Whoop. It helps me track my training, my recovery and most of all, my sleep. I also have an Eight Sleep bed, which is supposed to improve my sleep but we hardly even use it really. No shade on Eight Sleep, they are cool, weāve just not really seen the benefits.
Whoop on the other hand, I live and breath. One other small change that has positively impacted my / our life is putting an outlet timer on our modem. At 10pm every single night our internet cuts off. And yes, we turn it back on from time to time but most of the time we do not.
A phenomenal way to force a habit of getting off the devices, Netflix and so forth early and prepping for a consistent bedtime.No socials, no sim card. I think itās been nearly two years now that I have been without a sim card, and much longer, maybe 4-5 years since I have had any social media on my phone.
My long term plan was to throw my phone in the bin and just use the Apple Watch but itās actually impossible unfortunately. You can have the phone and just store it away but you canāt just live without one. Which is kinda shit.
I really just want an Apple Watch for podcasts and audiobooks, as Iād be heartbroken without them. I invested into Humaneāwhich ended up a total flopāmainly because I believed in their mission of ridding the world of the scourge of our time, the smartphone. I think itās coming, a world without phones, but it may still be some time yet.
Working with a dietician, and a chef. My partner and I, both started working with a dietician recently and itās been quite good. I am now pretty diligently tracking my body fat, lean muscle etc. for the first time ever and I am really enjoying it. I started at 22% body fat, which is not super, but got that down to 18% pretty quickly.
We also pay for a chef / cook to come and prepare our meals for us every so often now too. Granted we were doing this ourselves but we do it every fortnight just to free up the Sunday a bit and because itās quite economically feasible in Argentina, where we are currently living.Weekly breakfasts. I still struggle a fair bit socially and pull out of a lot of things and weirdly, once it gets past 4pm the chances Iāll bail on something go through the roof. So I do breakfasts. On Wednesday and Friday of every week I catch up with a couple of team members from Athyna from different departments.
We spend very little, sometimes zero time, speaking about work. Itās just a great way for me to spend some time with people, and especially with the team in a less formal space. I really love it.
![]() Legends. | ![]() More legends. |
And most importantly, my partner and my dog. And it goes without saying, the most important part of your mental health stack should be your closest partners in crime. Your loved ones. For me, that would be my partner Taina and my dog, Ziggy.

LOL at Ziggy.
Things I want to try
And lastly, for the sake of it, here is a short list of things I think I would like to try in the not too distant future to hopefully be happier and healthier again.
Kanna chocolate and gummies. We have a new sponsor of the newsletter, Fun Guy, who will run a few ads with us in the future that I am pretty excited to test out. The success I have with GABA makes me feel like I want to test out more supplements that might be able to improve my X, Y, or Z in small but meaningful ways.
*And no this 5000 word essay was not just an ad for an incoming sponsor, haha.
More co-working time. Pre-COVID I worked remotely, just like I do now, but I probably went into my co-work 2-3 days per week. Today, I probably go in 0.2 times per week. Once every 5 weeks, maybe less. Granted, I work from home and Taina and Ziggy are around, but itās still nice to get out and say hi to some new people, be around some energy etc.
Serious gut health work. And the one major stone I have left somewhat unturned is my gut health. I did a program for a few months some years ago but I left feeling like there was a lot more work to do. And the more research that we do, the more it seems that the gut to brain link is hugely important to creation of serotonin. I do plan to dive heavily into this at some point in the not too distant future.
Summary
Well, that was quite the experience diving into all of that with you. If nothing else, I hope this mental-health-in-public type post reminded you that we all go through ups and downs. And especially those of us who are ambitious and/or stupid enough to try to take on the world through entrepreneurship. | ![]() New Zealand. |
Extra reading
10% Happier, Dan Harris - March, 2014
Waking Up, Sam Harris - September, 2014
Tribe, Sebastian Junger - May, 2016
Lost Connections, Johann Hari - January, 2018
How To Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan - May, 2018
And that's it! You can follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn and also donāt forget to check out Athyna while youāre at it.

BRAIN FOOD š§
I've been really into The Startup Podcast for a while now, true fanboii. And in case you havenāt heard of itās a show that talks about all things startup. Its hosts Chris and Yaniv cover everything from product development and scaling, to fundraising and leadership.
So whether youāre a founder, or just startup-curious, I think this one offers valuable lessons and insights that are super worth tuning into.

TWEET OF THE WEEK š£
When Iām considering an investment, I ask founders: Whatās your theory of the game?
Then I ask myself if 1) I agree and 2) their theory updates mine in some way. x.com/i/web/status/1ā¦
ā Reid Hoffman (@reidhoffman)
7:38 PM ā¢ Aug 5, 2024
At 19, this kid built a Google Ads business that quickly made over $30 million in profit. The kid is me.
I was the only employee (in a basement).
At one point, I was Googleās 2nd largest advertiser after eBay.
Hereās the story of how I made this happen and what the biz did:
ā Val Katayev (@ValKatayev)
7:04 PM ā¢ Aug 4, 2024
In March of 2020, right as COVID hit, we made layoffs at Athyna. The first and only time we did it.
And the toughest period we've been through.
At the time it felt like the world was closing in and everything went downhill from there.
It wasn't. It was only theā¦ x.com/i/web/status/1ā¦ā Bill Kerr (@bill_kerrrrr)
12:22 PM ā¢ Aug 2, 2024

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