Reboot Podcast Episode #169 – Rupture + Repair = Resilience in Co-founder Relationships – with Lizzy Karp, Gill Damborg & Emma Devin

The Reboot podcast showcases the heart and soul, the wins and losses, the ups and downs of startup leadership. On the show, Entrepreneurs, CEO’s, and Startup Leaders discuss with Jerry Colonna the emotional and psychological challenges they face daily as leaders.

Guests

Lizzy Karp

Lizzy Karp

Co-founder of Brood

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Gillian Damborg

Gillian Damborg

Co-founder & CCO of Brood Care Inc

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Emma Devin

Emma Devin

Co-founder, Chief People & Product Officer at Brood Care Inc

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Episode Description

In today’s episode, Jerry Colonna engages in an insightful and deeply personal conversation with Emma, Gill, and Lizzy, the co-founders of Brood, a startup aiming to revolutionize modern family care. They share their experiences navigating the complexities of launching a startup amidst the pandemic, dealing with imposter syndrome, and the intense emotional and psychological challenges faced by startup founders. With Jerry’s support, the triad explores their relationship to conflict and how to best navigate cycles of rupture and repair.

Explore our other co-founder conversations

Show Highlights

Memorable Quotes:

“How do we do this? How do we do this in a sustainable way? How do we make this work and take the advice that we give to the families and parents for ourselves?” – Gill Damborg

“The demands are financially challenging, emotionally challenging, logistically challenging. And then because we’re so enmeshed in each other’s lives, I’ve used a metaphor that we spill over each other. We’re allowed to, or we have the habit of spilling the anxiety over each other because we’re all drowning, or one of us will be drowning at once.” – Lizzy Karp

“Part of our task in building a business is actually to balance content and container. The work is to always be balancing those things, to not give up content, you’re never going to give up the essence of why you exist, which goes back to the origin story.” – Jerry Colonna

“That’s the crazy fucking thing, is that the worthwhile is always hard.” – Jerry Colonna

“How do we make it sustainable for ourselves so that we can keep doing it? Because we are going to have conflict. We’re going to spill over each other. Honestly, that’s never going to stop. And I think we like we want to keep that going. But how do we straddle those? Big things like how do we straddle you know, being emotional and being within this giant healthcare crisis and just continuing to do it every day more sustainably.” – Gill Damborg

“There’s almost this piece of learning to disappoint and being okay with it. So I don’t think disappointing either of you is the worst thing. I think you have taught me that it’s okay to disappoint you.” – Emma Devin

“Understanding that the cycle of rupture and repair will keep happening and we’ll keep getting better at it and we’ll keep understanding each other through it. And we want to be here. Like our foundation is so, is so deep to reach from that when we have that cycle of rupture and repair we re-enter symbiosis in a really beautiful way.” – Emma Devin

“This may land radically for you, but do you know that conflict can be positive for a relationship? It can feel really dangerous to lean into the conflict. Because what happens if we rupture and can’t repair? But if you rupture and repair without a full cleansing, it’s a scabbing over of an unhealed wound only to show up in another rupture in another place and another time.” – Jerry Colonna