The ADHD founder's survival guide
This one's late.
I was supposed to publish Thursday. Instead, I caught a cold that turned into something worse, and - oh yeah - I got married today. To Justine, who’s been with me through everything you’ve read about in this newsletter. We finally made it official.
So here I am, slightly feverish, freshly married, writing about the thing I probably should have written about years ago.
ADHD.
If you have it, this essay is for you.
If you don’t have it - or think you don’t - keep reading anyway. You might recognize something. Or you might recognize someone you work with, live with, love. Approximately half of my close work friends have ADD or ADHD. In the founder and engineering world, we’re everywhere. Often undiagnosed. Often struggling in silence.
This is the essay I wish someone had written for me twenty years ago.
The broken years
For most of my life, I thought I was broken in a way that couldn’t be fixed.
Not broken like “needs improvement”. Broken like defective. Like there was something fundamentally wrong with the wiring, and I just had to live with it.
The symptoms were there, obvious in retrospect:
Swinging moods. Not just good days and bad days - violent swings between manic productivity and crushing despair. Depression could hit hard, out of nowhere, and stick around for days or weeks.
Couldn’t finish things. Projects started with explosive enthusiasm and abandoned at 80% completion. Ideas multiplied faster than I could execute them. The graveyard of almost-done work growing larger every year.
All over the place. Conversations where I’d interrupt constantly because the thought would evaporate if I didn’t say it NOW. Meetings where my mind would wander to three different problems while someone was talking directly to me. The inability to focus on what mattered when something shinier appeared.
Or the opposite. Hyperfocus so intense I’d forget to eat, forget to drink, forget to sleep. I ended up in the hospital more than once - avitaminosis, dehydration, exhaustion that bordered on dangerous. When I locked onto something, I couldn’t unlock. The world disappeared.
The bad moments were unbearable. Not just difficult - unbearable. The kind of dark where you don’t see a way forward.
And through all of it, I wasn’t fair. To coworkers who had to deal with my chaos. To co-founders who couldn’t predict which version of me would show up. To employees who deserved better leadership. To my family.
To Justine, most of all. Who stayed anyway. Who just married me anyway.
I spent over twenty years of my professional career being a flaming wreck. A pain in the ass to everyone who tried to work with me or love me.
I should have done something about it so much earlier.
Step One: get diagnosed
This is the first and most important thing I can tell you:
Get diagnosed.
I know. It sounds obvious. It sounds like the kind of advice that makes people roll their eyes. But I lived for decades - DECADES - thinking I was just broken. Thinking this was my personality. Thinking I had to white-knuckle my way through life because that’s just how I was built.
The diagnosis changed everything.
Not because it fixed anything immediately. But because it gave me a framework. A name for the thing I’d been fighting. Evidence that I wasn’t uniquely defective - that millions of people have this, and there are strategies, treatments, support systems.
The diagnosis itself was almost anticlimactic. A conversation with a psychiatrist. Some questionnaires. A history review. And then:
Yes, this is textbook ADHD.
Textbook. The thing I’d been struggling with my entire life was textbook. Documented. Understood. Treatable.
If you’re reading this and recognizing yourself - if the swinging moods and the inability to finish things and the hyperfocus and the chaos sound familiar - please, please get evaluated. It might not be ADHD. It might be something else. But knowing is better than guessing, and guessing is what I did for twenty-plus years.
It gets worse with time. It gets worse with stress. And startup life is nothing but stress. Do it now. Don’t wait until you’ve burned through your relationships and your health like I did.
Step Two: don’t give up on treatment
Here’s what nobody told me about medication: the first thing probably won’t work.
My journey through ADHD meds was not a straight line. It was a mess.
First attempt: Nothing. Felt like sugar pills. No change.
Second attempt: Worse. My libido went to ashes. I was sleepy all day but couldn’t sleep at night. Couldn’t wake up early. Everything made me nervous. I was a different kind of broken, not better broken.
Third attempt: Hit.
Three tries to find the right medication. And even then, it took time to tune the dosage, to figure out the timing, to understand how it interacted with sleep and food and stress.
If I’d given up after the first try, I’d still be that flaming wreck. If I’d given up after the second try - after the side effects made me wonder if the cure was worse than the disease - I’d never have found what worked.
I’m not going to tell you what medication I take. That’s not me being coy - it’s me being responsible. Every body is different. Every brain is different. What works for me might be useless or harmful for you. You need to work with a doctor who knows your specific situation, your specific chemistry, your specific life.
But I will tell you: don’t give up after one failure. Don’t give up after two. The right treatment is out there. Finding it is a process, not an event.
Step Three: pay it forward
You’re not alone.
I know it feels that way. ADHD has a way of making you feel uniquely broken, uniquely difficult, uniquely unable to function like “normal” people. The shame compounds. You stop talking about it because talking about it means admitting weakness.
Here’s the truth: there are founders, engineers, creators, builders everywhere who have the same thing. Not identical - that would be too easy - but similar. Similar struggles, similar coping mechanisms, similar scars.
Find them.
I don’t mean join a support group (though that’s fine if it works for you). I mean look around at your professional network, your friends, your collaborators. The people who seem a little too intense, a little too scattered, a little too prone to either hyperfocus or chaos. Odds are good some of them are dealing with the same thing.
Talk about it. Share what’s worked. Share what hasn’t. When someone newer to the diagnosis asks for advice, give them what you wish you’d had.
This is paying it forward. Someone will do it for you first. Then you’ll have the chance to do it for someone else.
Half of my close work friends have ADD or ADHD. We’ve talked about it, compared notes, helped each other through the rough patches. That community - informal, unstructured, just people who get it - has been as valuable as any medication.
The things that actually help
Beyond diagnosis and medication, some practical stuff that’s made a difference:
Private life matters.
I don’t mean parties and drinking and crazy adventures that make people question your sanity. I mean the opposite. The quiet stuff.
Walks with a dog. Regular exercise - not extreme, just regular. Hobbies that aren’t work - board games with friends, video gaming, things that use your brain differently. A routine that includes rest.
For years I thought I could outrun ADHD with intensity. Work harder, move faster, burn brighter. It doesn’t work. You just burn out faster.
The walks with Justine - even during the crunch, even when my body was screaming - those kept me functional. The hobbies that have nothing to do with startups - those keep me sane. The routine of sleep and meals and movement - that’s the foundation everything else sits on.
Sleep is not optional.
ADHD and sleep have a complicated relationship. The medication can mess with it. The hyperfocus definitely messes with it. The racing thoughts at 3 AM mess with it.
But sleep deprivation makes everything worse. The mood swings get wider. The focus gets harder. The bad days get darker. Protecting sleep is protecting everything else.
Structure compensates for chaos.
My brain doesn’t naturally create structure. It creates chaos. So I’ve learned to build external systems - calendars, lists, routines, accountability partners - that impose structure from outside.
This isn’t a failure. It’s an adaptation. A diabetic doesn’t feel bad about needing insulin. An ADHD brain doesn’t need to feel bad about needing structure.
The new man
I need you to understand something.
The last few years of my life have been more stressful than the previous twenty combined. Building Omea. Building Migam. Fundraising. Technical challenges. Moving toward Silicon Valley. Crunches that left me seeing sunrises for eight days straight.
And these few years have also been the best days of my life.
That’s not despite the ADHD treatment. It’s because of it.
I’m a new man. Not perfect - still chaotic, still prone to hyperfocus, still fighting the wiring. But functional in a way I never was before. Present in a way I couldn’t be before. Fair to the people around me in a way I wasn’t capable of before.
Justine married me today. She knew me during the flaming wreck years. She’s seen the transformation. She said yes anyway - said yes because of who I’ve become, not just despite who I was.
The diagnosis. The treatment. The community. The lifestyle changes. They added up to a different person. Someone I actually like being. Someone who can handle stress that would have destroyed the old version of me.
If you’re in the early stages - newly diagnosed, trying to find the right medication, wondering if it’s worth the effort - I promise you it is. The person on the other side of that process is worth meeting.
For those who don’t have ADHD
If you’ve read this far and none of it resonates personally, thank you for staying.
You probably know someone. A co-founder, an employee, a friend, a family member. Someone who seems brilliant but scattered. Someone who swings between manic productivity and unexplained darkness. Someone who’s hard to work with but clearly has something valuable to offer.
Maybe they don’t know what’s wrong. Maybe they think they’re just broken.
You can’t diagnose them. You can’t force them to get help. But you can be someone who understands. Who doesn’t write them off as difficult. Who creates space for the conversation if they’re ready to have it.
And if they do get diagnosed, if they do start treatment, if they do start the long process of becoming functional - you can be someone who notices. Who acknowledges the change. Who pays it forward by being part of their support system.
The founder and engineering world is full of ADHD brains. We built a lot of this industry. We’re also burning out, melting down, disappearing without explanation. Anything that increases understanding helps.
Three steps
That’s it. That’s the whole thing:
One: Get diagnosed. Stop guessing. Stop assuming you’re just broken. Find out what you’re actually dealing with.
Two: Don’t give up on treatment. The first medication might not work. The second might make things worse. Keep going. The right combination exists.
Three: Pay it forward. You’re not alone. Find the others. Share what works. Accept help when it’s offered. Offer help when you can.
I spent twenty years as a flaming wreck because I didn’t know these three steps existed. I thought I just had to endure. I thought the chaos was permanent.
It wasn’t. It isn’t.
The last few years have been the hardest and the best of my life. The diagnosis made that possible. The treatment made that possible. The people who paid it forward before I could - they made that possible.
Now it’s my turn to pay it forward. This essay is part of that.
If you recognized yourself in these words, please don’t wait another twenty years like I did. The new version of you is waiting.
Less talking, more building. See you next week.
Max
PS. To Justine - thank you for staying through the broken years. Thank you for pushing me to get help. Thank you for saying yes this week. The new man is yours.
PS.2 Next week: Omea final demo preparations. Our story, just before releasing the big news. It’s almost time.