Startup Lessons From Y Combinator’s Most Sought-after Executive Coach

When Dr. Gena Gorlin told me that she’d interviewed the in-house coach at Y Combinator for the podcast that she co-hosts with Alice Bentick, I knew that their conversation was going to be gold. In her position as the first—and only—person to serve as the accelerator’s founder coach, Amy Buechler advised thousands of founders through the rollercoaster of emotions that comes with entrepreneurship. For this piece, Gena and Alice Lemée distilled Amy’s best advice for founders as they grapple with fear, anxiety, and doubt. —Kate Lee

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People would pay thousands of dollars to be a fly on the wall in some of Amy Buechler’s conversations. As a licensed psychotherapist and the first (and only) in-house founder coach at famed startup accelerator Y Combinator (YC), Buechler has mentored countless of its batches, the cohorts of startup founders who made it past YC’s razor-thin 1.5–2 percent acceptance rate.

But her onboarding as Silicon Valley’s top startup coach was no tiptoe through the tulips. When YC first hired Buechler in 2015 as a “batch director,” her job description was comically ambiguous (“look over founders” was the gist). There were no previous directors she could consult with, no set parameters, and no blueprint. “It was sheer and utter panic,” Buechler tells me (Gena) and my co-host Alice Bentick in this episode of our podcast, The Founder’s Mindset.

So she went into full-blown “entrepreneurial” mode—iterating rapidly, marrying her expertise as a psychotherapist with her insights from spending extensive time with her customers—all while helping founders embrace that mode in turn.

Five years later, Buechler emerged from that directionless moment with clarity and industry-wide respect. She has supported thousands of the world’s top startup founders at YC, and 1,000 more since leaving the company in 2019.

So how does Buechler coach these founders, who often face mounting fear, anxiety, and doubt? 

In our podcast interview with Buechler, we had the chance to speak with her about the psychological patterns of founders, the pitfalls of starting a company, the tools to fix those challenges, and how to enjoy the entrepreneurial ride while being cleared-eyed about the statistical likelihood of failure.

Let’s dive in.

To be a founder is to be fearful 

Pause. If the entrepreneurial ride is this tumultuous, why on Earth do people sign up? 

Because people see entrepreneurship as a gateway to agency and autonomy. To start a company is to have a personal narrative where you’re not just a character in someone else’s plot, but the protagonist. But do founders feel in control of their professional destiny once they get going?

Buechler would say no—not even close. In reality, most founders operate from scarcity (they don’t have enough time, resources, or money) and uncertainty (they don’t know when or from where that stuff will come). Combine scarcity and uncertainty, and you’ve brewed a potent cocktail of fear.

The first problem with fear is that terrified people often make terrible decisions. “Fear limits thinking and shuts off the frontal lobe,” Buechler explains. The brain’s frontal lobe is involved in our high-level cognitive functions, like problem-solving, emotional regulation, and planning: everything a founder needs to succeed.

The second problem? Those terrible decisions reveal themselves immediately in startups, usually through software, the team, and internal processes.

For example, shipping code full of bugs could trigger a slew of emails from frustrated customers. An incomplete hiring process might lead to hiring a chief marketing officer who doesn’t fit into the startup’s culture from day one.

For better or for worse, a startup will always mirror the founder's internal state. That remains unchanged until the business gets acquired, goes public, or fails.

Three ways a founder can conquer fear 

So, how can a founder manage their emotions? Is turning off the fear switch even possible?