Ok that title is not entirely true—I got much more than that. It was an incredible experience that shaped me professionally and personally. I'm sharing my story of anxiety at Flipdish because a lot of what I experienced was around trying to do too much, overworking because I loved the work, and maybe trying to compensate for a little imposter syndrome. After speaking to many people, I now realise that anxiety in Product Management is much more common than I thought.
The Startup Pressure Cooker
I joined Flipdish as the first product hire. The company was scaling fast—new markets, new products, new verticals, and new regions all at once. It was chaos, but the kind of chaos that felt exciting and full of opportunity.
In a startup, no one holds your hand. You have to be self-sufficient, so I pushed myself hard. It wasn't because I was afraid or someone was piling on the pressure, although there was plenty, but I found myself not wanting to close the laptop at night because I really enjoyed the work. I wanted to do everything—prototypes, go-to-market strategies, documentation for success teams, refining messaging for sales. I always had one more thing to do before shutting my laptop.
It was all going great, but...
The Signs Were There
- Watching TV, my vision would randomly blur, and the screen would warp. A doctor told me to stop staring at screens all day. I laughed it off.
- I couldn’t handle stressful movies or TV shows. I felt too on edge. I just thought my tastes had changed
- I’d catch myself brushing my teeth with my shoulders tensed up to my ears—physically incapable of relaxing.
Then came the panic attack.
One night, I was sitting on the couch, and without warning a wave of heat rushed over my body. My veins bulged, my vision blurred, and my entire system went into fight or flight mode—and I immediately wanted to fly straight to the hospital. I was convinced I was dying. My partner, thankfully, had seen panic attacks before and reassured me.
I managed to calm down after a few hours, but for two weeks I felt like I hadn’t fully "recovered" from it. The anxiety lingered, a constant tense hum in my body. I started researching, looking for answers, and stumbled on a podcast about anxiety.
I found one, "Owning It" from Caroline Foran. I listened to one episode, and a single line hit me hard:
"It gets better."
Tears streamed down my face. Imagine a grown man in Sandyford Industrial Estate walking along, sobbing.
I got back to my apartment and just cried. It was actually incredibly cathartic and the release that I needed to get back to some kind of reasonable baseline.
Finding Balance
I made changes. The biggest? I stopped overworking myself. I picked up new hobbies that didn’t involve screens—like racing go-karts, something I had always wanted to do. (Ironically, the first piece of kit I bought was a lap timer—a screen mounted to my steering wheel.)
And I started talking about it.
That’s when I realized I wasn’t alone. Product leaders, CEOs, and startup veterans all shared their own struggles with anxiety. Some had panic attacks. Others fainted from stress.
SupaPM – Building a Better Way
Being a product manager is relentless. You’re expected to:
- Stay on top of market trends, competitors, and customer insights.
- Prioritize incoming feedback, sales calls, and support tickets.
- Keep a neat tidy backlog for the company
- Keep engineering, sales, and leadership aligned—all while making the right bets.
It’s overwhelming. And I believe AI can help.
That’s why I’m building SupaPM—a tool to take the weight off product managers by automating the most time-consuming parts of the job. The waitlist is live now. If this resonates with you, sign up and let me know what you'd like to see.
And if you’re feeling overwhelmed, take this as your sign: Step back. Take care of yourself. Your health is more important than any company.
