Startup Lessons From PSYOP Barracks in Afganistan

Tom Davis is an entrepreneur who is currently deployed in PSYOP in Afganistan for US Army. He is trying to launch his startup company from Afganistan with a co-founder presumably in US. He tells us about his experience in launching a startup from the restrictive environment (”I live in a room the size of a closet and I code my site from a laptop sitting on top of a tough box”). Two of his ideas resonates with me most:

Be happy for what you have, don’t dwell on the things you’ve lost, and always move forward. We know that turning a perceived negative experience into a learning one will make you a stronger person. It will also make you a stronger founder.

Now that I’m in this restrictive environment, I realize just how little I got done back home. When I “worked” on GameAscent, I would spend 90% of my time reading feeds, researching services I knew I wouldn’t need for a year or more, Googling for articles comparing MySQL and PostgreSQL, or other such nonsense. Now that I only have a couple hours a day at most to work, I spend 90% of my time actually working and 10% troubleshooting or finding solutions to immediate problems. Work with blinders on and you’ll be amazed at how much you can accomplish.

Which reminds me that I too need to cut down on my web meanderings.

I haven’t even been in military nor will I ever be. I dislike military for robotification of humanity, for turning humans into efficient killing machines. However I faced family crisis of much more serious nature, unrelenting over several years and in overcoming it I grew a lot tougher and wiser. I realized the value of living one day at a time, how every sunshine counts, how each bit of happiness has to be treasured for overcoming the dark days ahead and how not to give up irrespective of the odds against you. Giving up is not an option.
Working through a crisis in your life can make you stronger, much stronger than you can ever imagine.

PS. In case you are wondering what he does in PSYOP, he beautifully summarizes it “almost start a riot here; go into enemy territory there; at the end of the day it’s just talking to people and trying not to get blown up in the process”. He creates print propaganda material for PSYOP.