Follow the Gradient Why Being Driven Nearly Destroyed VARA’s Founder Jonas Muff
What if the ambition powering your startup is quietly working against you?
What if being driven is less about purpose and more about fear you have not named yet?
Follow the Gradient sits down with Jonas Muff, founder of AI healthcare company VARA, for a rare conversation about ambition, identity, and the inner cost of building. Jonas is best known for his essay The Curse of Being Driven, written after a personal collapse during a critical fundraising moment that forced him to question what was really motivating his success.
This episode is not about productivity or resilience as performance traits. It is an examination of how founders construct self-worth, how fear hides inside ambition, and what changes when you stop confusing motion with meaning.
We talk about:
Why Jonas’ inability to get out of bed during fundraising was an identity crisis, not burnout
How the need to stand out often masks a deeper belief of not being enough
The subtle difference between purpose-driven ambition and fear-driven momentum
Why overthinking is an attempt to control uncertainty rather than face it
How meditation reveals the volume of inner noise instead of silencing it
What vulnerability-based leadership looks like in real, uncomfortable decisions
Rather than offering tools to optimize yourself, this conversation lingers in the harder territory founders usually avoid. It treats ambition as something to understand, not suppress, and leadership as a byproduct of self-awareness rather than force of will.
Our biggest takeaways, including Jonas’s view on what founders consistently misunderstand about ambition and fear:
https://followthegradient.io/p/jonas-muff-podcast
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Where to find Jonas Muff:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonas-muff/
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🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.
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