Parashat Vayigash

This is a past Snapchatorah where Hillel Fuld takes the Torah portion, learns some lessons and apply them to entrepreneurship and startups.

Over the past couple of weeks,  we talked about Jacob and his son Joseph, and the story in which Joseph’s brothers sold him into Egyptian slavery. This week he confronts them.  Just to remind you the backstory Jacob favored Joseph out of his twelve sons, the brothers, therefore, hated Joseph out of jealousy.  Threw him into a put and sold him into slavery.  In Egypt Joseph’s problems only got bigger, he was falsely accused and jailed and we talked about last week how Karma worked in his favor.

Long story short Joseph ends up ruling over half of Egypt and when there is a famine in other countries his brothers come down to Egypt to get food. Joseph sees his brothers in Egypt they don’t recognize him and the stage is set for the most beautiful the sweetest revenge in history. Just think of the grudge, the negativity Joseph must have felt for his brothers for all the suffering he underwent. But now when his brothers needed him most for food, what he could have done. Joseph stands there eavesdropping on his brothers as they are talking amongst themselves just think of the tension that he must have felt and the desire to take revenge. And at the peak of the suspense Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and says I am Joseph, they are in shock. He says I don’t hold a grudge, you did not send me here G-d did I don’t blame you.  Now just think what type of discipline and self-control and restraint it must have taken Joseph to not take revenge and to forgo his anger toward the brothers. After decades of not seeing his beloved father and suffering in Egypt he now has the sweetest opportunity to take revenge but what does he do? He throws the confrontation and negativity out the window.

You have no idea how many times I have seen this, the grudge, the defensiveness, the confrontation, the negativity. The investor who didn’t get what you were doing and therefore didn’t invest in your company, the journalist that did not agree to cover you, the knee-jerk reaction to defensiveness confrontation and negativity. He didn’t give me a check,  I’ll never take money from him. He didn’t cover my startup, I’ll never give him a story again. Wrong response, throw the negativity out the window.

I am not even referring to the dangers of burning bridges or the fact that the investor you just blacklisted might have been about to help you with something else. I am simply referring to the dangers of negativity for you. The ability to throw that bitterness out the window, the ability to not confront shows a level maturity that every entrepreneur needs and vice-versa. The definition of a successful entrepreneur is one that not only celebrates the positive answers they get but knows how to learn from the negative ones and put aside the instinct of negativity. Joseph taught us as entrepreneurs the very valuable lesson to fight the instinct for negativity the unbelievably strong instinct he must have felt, move on and embrace positivity.

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Hillel is a Co-Founder at ZCastApp, mentor at Google, Microsoft, and many other accelerators across Israel. Add Hillel on  Twitter