When the Storm Passes
I sat in my therapist’s office and told her the news: I was about to close the biggest deal of my life. After a long period of negotiations, I would sign the contract for the acquisition of Pismo, the company I founded. It was a moment of jubilation and satisfaction. A lot of hard work was finally paying off.
My therapist looked at me, then handed over a prescription.
At first, I was confused: why would I need support when everything was finally coming together? But my therapist wanted to protect me because she understood my patterns better than I did. I function very well in a crisis. When the storm passes — that’s when I’m lost.
Flying at high capacity through a storm feels natural to me. My parents raised my sisters and me to work hard, pushing us to get more from life than they’d been able to. I spent the first sixteen years of my career working for a financial services company, frequently spending 24-30 hours at a time in the office. My anxiety was my fuel, driving me to achieve milestones at a rapid pace, and by the time I was twenty-six years old, I was already a director.
But a pace like this has a cost. The high-speed environment and my own restless drive took a toll on my well-being and threatened to consume my life. I dreamed of taking my daughters to the cinema on a weekday. I dreamed of spending more time with my family. I dreamed of the opportunity to expand my own skill set, to study or rebrand.
Eventually, driven by my own guilt and the toll this life took on my mental health, I left my high-powered role. I decided to spend time studying technology before moving into consulting or something similar that offered more flexibility and time with my children. The storm of my early career had broken. I should be happy, right?
One weekday, I finally took my girls to the cinema. They cuddled in on either side of me, eating popcorn and enjoying the movie. I sat in the dark feeling empty and wrong. The storm had passed and my life was quiet. But something was missing. It was as though I needed the familiar chaos to feel alive.
If anxiety had been my constant companion through years of corporate success, depression was something new and frightening for me. I knew how to deal with anxiety, but I didn’t know how to deal with not wanting to leave the house.
Perhaps unconsciously, I was already searching for the next challenge. Through my depression, I kept studying and realized the huge potential of technology for banking. I went to my husband, Marcelo, and we eventually brought our colleague Ricardo and my sister Juliana on board, too. Together, we founded Pismo.
If I’d been looking for a storm to chase, I’d found one. For years, we struggled financially. Without salaries, we ran through almost all of our savings to pay for our kids’ schools. We sacrificed birthday parties for our daughters and sold our car. My anxiety swung back into high gear, but the depression, the sense of feeling lost, faded into the background.
In December 2016, our Series A funding was backed by RedPoint Ventures, offering us some breathing room. We could pay our bills again, but the pace of life never slowed. As we grew, so did our challenges. Securing contracts with our first corporate clients was intense, but it was nothing compared to the journey of our acquisition.
I remember those months, from receiving the Letter of Intent to the final signature, vividly. They involved so many new issues and learning moments, from a rigorous due diligence process to regulatory approval. We worked through time zones and holidays, thrust from periods of huge workloads to waiting for final approval.
“When I sign, I’ll be calmer,” Ricardo said. And then: “When I close, I’ll be calmer.”
But I’d started to realize that seeking calm isn’t about an event in my life. It’s an internal process — one that I have to work on. Anxiety is part of my personality, and it’s not going to disappear overnight — not when I quit a job, not when I sell a company, not when I sign a deal. And it’s hard for me to say goodbye to anxiety because I’m also aware that it’s part of my success: it’s brought me on this journey and added to my drive.
The key for me is finding balance. I want my anxiety to fuel my progress without leading to burnout and depression.
It takes practice and active effort. Even now, my co-founders and I are trying to master this balance. If you’re wired to be on edge, slowing down is difficult. My therapist suggested desensitization techniques to help me cope with different paces of life. I’ve been trying to integrate these practices into my routine, like playing tennis and getting out of São Paulo on weekends. It’s a process, but one I’m proud to commit to.
Back in those days of depression before I founded Pismo, when I didn’t know which storm I was searching for, I tattooed “Resilience” on my right wrist, a reminder that I could overcome dark days. Years later, after Pismo’s successful Series B funding, I tattooed “Gratitude” on my left. I carry the balance of these two perspectives on my sleeves, embracing and working through the good and the bad.
I don’t need a storm to succeed anymore, but I’m grateful for all the dark clouds that showed me the way.
Abração,
Daniela
