Building something that disrupts a system requires a particular kind of inner stability. You will be told your idea is too small, too big, too early, too late, too ambitious, or too naive — often by people who mean well. You will have days when the data suggests you are wrong and your instincts suggest you are right. You will experience the specific loneliness of a founder who sees something that no one around them sees yet. The inner work of founding is learning to hold that tension without collapsing into doubt or hardening into arrogance. It means building a practice of honest self-assessment: knowing which critiques to hold and which to release. And it means investing in your own formation as seriously as you invest in your organisation's strategy. You cannot build something bigger than yourself while you are still a smaller version of who this work requires you to become.