Existential Thought - I Have Enemies — Is That the Price of Entry?
Even Though I Try my Best to Be Fair and Kind…
There comes a moment in most founders’ journeys when a quiet, unsettling realisation lands:
I’m trying to be fair. I’m trying to be reasonable. I’m trying to do right by everyone.
And yet… some people actively and intentionally dislike me.
Not indifference. Not misunderstanding.
Opposition.
Enemies—sometimes subtle, sometimes overt.
This is one of those things that is not taught in business school or in most class rooms. You find out on the job. To be fair its not limited to entrepreneurship, though I suspect its heightened in the start-up realm as there is far more at play.
This moment is rarely discussed, because it doesn’t fit the preferred narratives. We’re told that if we communicate clearly, lead empathetically, and act with integrity, conflict should resolve itself.
But that’s not how reality works.
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try - there is no resolution.
The Illusion of Universal Approval
Everyone, generally speaking wants to be liked.
And those that tell you otherwise, do so knowing that they are not prepared to sell themselves for “likes” at the expense of authenticity. And more than likely, they have given up on being liked and/or being likeable!
Those that still want to be liked, often and erroneously believe - If I’m good, I’ll be liked.
That belief doesn’t withstand the test of scale and application to creation.
The moment you make decisions that affect resources, direction, power, or opportunity - neutrality disappears. Even when you act with utmost fairness, outcomes are uneven. Someone benefits more. Someone feels left behind. Someone disagrees with the direction. Because after all, we come at any venture from our perspective, our personal situation and chapter in life and that is never going to be universal. Every transaction is a push or a pull.
Fairness does not mean frictionless.
And trying to be liked by everyone often produces the opposite result: diluted leadership, blurred boundaries and unspoken resentment.
“You Can’t Make an Omelette Without Cracking Eggs”
“Breaking a few eggs” doesn’t mean being inconsiderate or deliberately cruel.
It means accepting that creation involves disruption.
Any act of building:
re-allocates attention
re-distributes opportunity
introduces comparison
exposes competence gaps
surfaces unspoken expectations. And unmet expectations always breed resentment.
Even when no harm is intended, impact still exists.
And people being the fallible and beautiful beings that we are, respond to impact emotionally before we respond rationally. Making conflict almost entirely unavoidable.
The question you have to ask yourself - is how much do you care and why should you?
When you know the answer, you’ll also know what to do!
Projection: When Your Movement Triggers Someone Else’s Stasis
When you move—especially visibly—you become a mirror.
Your action reflects:
other people’s postponed ambitions
risks they didn’t take, moves they didn’t make
conversations they avoided
compromises they settled for
This is rarely conscious.
But yet, it still produces tension.
Your progress can feel like an accusation, even when none is said out loud. Your decisiveness can feel like judgment on their inaction. Your visibility can feel like exposure of their shortcomings.
Silent resentment festers and forms—not because of what you did to them, but because of what your movement awakens in them.
Power Changes the Emotional Physics
The moment you are seen as having momentum, power, or influence, relationships change....
Not because you changed as a person, but because the dynamics and the context changed.
People no longer engage with you as a peer. They engage with you as a symbol:
of authority
of opportunity
of threat
of aspiration
And symbols attract projection far more than people do.
This is why founders often feel misunderstood precisely when they are trying hardest to be fair.
Are Enemies Inevitable?
If you are building anything meaningful, some opposition is inevitable.
”You’re nobody, until somebody sues you” Or so the saying goes… Or is it the song?
Not because you are unethical.
Not because you are unkind.
But because leadership requires choice, and choice creates consequence.
The absence of enemies often means one of three things:
You are not doing enough
You are not decisive and/or successful enough
You are optimising for approval rather than direction
That doesn’t mean criticism should be dismissed. Accountability still matters. Listening still matters.
But it does mean that being universally liked is not a reliable indicator of integrity or accomplishments.
The Deeper Question
So the question isn’t:
Why do I have enemies?
It’s:
Which conflicts are the cost of progress?
Which resentments are about boundaries, not wrongdoing?
And which criticisms are invitations to course-correct, rather than retreat?
There is a difference between being disliked because you harmed someone—and being disliked because you refused to abandon your direction to keep the peace.
Not every battle is worth fighting. Not every war is righteous. And knowing the difference is priceless.
What Building Actually Asks of You
In order to make things happen, you have to make things.
And doing so, may include the willingness to be misunderstood for long periods of time while you make the things!
To carry discomfort without immediate validation.
To accept that fairness does not guarantee affection.
To hold tension without collapsing into defensiveness or self-erasure.
And perhaps most difficult of all:
To keep your ethics intact while accepting that not everyone will approve of how you exercised them.
If success was as simple as God-given talent or tremendous effort, enemies would less likely exist. The path would be set and clear for all that chose to pursue it, removing any and all subjectivity.
Creation entails change and most people do not enjoy change. Enemies exist because creation disrupts equilibrium. And not everyone that is successful deserves it. We all desire it though, even when our inputs do not always measure up to our entitled expectations.
So maybe the real measure isn’t whether you have critics or enemies—but whether you can still act with clarity, restraint, and humanity while standing in the tension their presence creates.
Not to harden.
Not to dominate.
But to continue—without pretending that building something real comes without resistance. We do not create in a vacuum and every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
That may not be the price of being a “bad person”.
It may simply be the price of making anything that moves the world forward.