I was talking to a very well-known founder friend last week, who told me about a great employee he thought would be with his high-growth company for years.

She was brilliant. She shipped features faster than anyone on the team, never complained about hard features or complex tickets, and always said she was "making good progress" and would "figure it out" when confronted with obstacles.

That was until last Thursday, when she walked into my friend's office and quit. No warning. No escalation. Just: "I can't do this anymore. I don't think I'm right for this place."

I've heard versions of this scenario from the most successful founder friends I know, and it's happened a few times at our company as well.

Some of the highest-potential people—the hardest working, most ambitious ones you might expect could scale with the company—suddenly flame out in spectacular fashion.

I call this the hero's complex. And after six years of building Almanac and Blaze, I'm convinced it's one of the most under-discussed killers of high-growth companies.

Here's what I've learned about why some of the best people burn out—and the one trait that separates those who stay from those who don't.

Startups Don't Die Mid-Keystroke

The saying goes that "startups don't die mid-keystroke"—meaning most startups don't die because they run out of money. They die because they run out of motivation.

That's because high-growth startups are both sprints and marathons. An average successful startup takes somewhere between eight to ten years to go from founding to an IPO or a sale. And the irony of succeeding in the startup game is that that the more successful you are, the harder the work gets. The higher up you go, the thinner the oxygen becomes.

We've been working on Almanac and Blaze now for six years, and our success has only earned us the right to keep working hard for another five to ten years. And the work that we're doing now is more complicated and faster-paced than ever.

Every day counts at a startup—and every day counts for years on end. So as a team member, managing your energy and motivation is critical to sustaining yourself at a startup to make it all the way through.

And as a founder, keeping the team together is one of the most correlated factors with long-term success. If you can retain the same high-performing people for years, they'll work faster and more efficiently, with less communication or meeting overhead needed, and get more done per hour than 99% of other teams.

Of course, we've hired people who are not the right fit for the demands of a startup or our particular culture, which is noticeable quickly. But there's one particular kind of crash and burn that's harder to notice and is particularly damaging. I call it the hero complex.

The Pattern That Destroys High Performers

The hero's complex is a particular type of burnout that tends to affect really high-achieving, ambitious professionals—exactly the types of people you want at your startup.

These folks have incredibly lofty expectations for themselves. They're often very capable, and used to being extremely good at what they do.

But inherently, if you're working at a fast-growing startup, you're also often working on a set of problems that haven't been solved before. You're building on the edges of technology, or you're pushing to hit almost impossible growth goals on unreasonable timelines. You always have more to do than you have time to do it.

Working at this kind of startup stretches, or exceeds, the limits of anybody's capacity. And that can be particularly hard for people who are not used to working on the edge of failure.

What tends to happen to some of these folks, unfortunately, is that when they're faced with an unsolvable challenge—whether it's building a technically complex feature or hitting an aggressive growth target—rather than asking for help, they internalize the challenge.

In their heads, the narrative is something like: "Hey, I don't know what I'm gonna do here, so I'll just work really hard on my own to solve it. I'll spend my nights and weekends quietly struggling to crack things. I'll pretend everything's okay in meetings, and then I'll finish the work and I'll look like a hero and no one will be the wiser that I struggled at all."

And so these would-be heroes go to daily standups saying, "Everything's fine, I'm on track" or "I'm a little behind, but don't worry" and never raise any flags or ask for help.

Then the pressure mounts and mounts on them, both because they're falling behind their initial deadlines and because of the judgment they impose on themselves for not meeting their own expectations. And when the pressure gets too much, they erupt or collapse.

The Hero's Complex is Hard to Spot

Detecting someone who's stuck in a hero's complex is kind of like trying to spot someone drowning.

Because of how it's depicted in TV shows and movies, people often think drowning is a loud, public affair, with people waving their hands around and screaming in the water. However, real people who are drowning don't yell or splash. They spend all of their energy trying to stay above water and none of it on trying to get attention from other people that could actually assist them. Over time, they become tired and overwhelmed, going underwater for ever longer periods. And so they drown not in a big flash but in silence.

That's what burning out can look like in a startup setting. Great people can spend so much time trying to stay above water on their project that they forget, or are ashamed, to ask for help.

As a manager, it's really hard to detect the hero's dynamic because sometimes people don't want you to see that they're struggling in the first place, or they're so concentrated on surviving that they forget to ask for help.

And the hero's complex leads to a regrettable situation for both sides: the company loses top talent, and the employee loses a position that could be ideal under proper circumstances.

The Solve for the Hero's Complex

We recently did an exercise where we looked at the common traits amongst our most extraordinary employees: the people on our team who have made it the longest and who have been responsible for a disproportionate amount of our output and impact.

We asked ourselves, what do these amazing startup unicorns have in common?

They often care deeply about their work. They are amazingly competent. They are amazing thinkers and clear communicators. They move faster than anyone expects.

But most of all, despite being so good at so many things, what makes them most successful is that they know their limits. They detect early on what they can and can't do, and they're willing to ask others for help. They don't start their work until they have what they need to succeed. They know that winning is a team sport.

Often, companies will recruit for competence, but screen less for professional maturity. And even if you do hire people with professional maturity, the intense pressure of startup life can push anyone into this trap. If you already have high performers struggling with the hero's complex, you need to know how to help them before they burn out.

4 Things You Can Do About It

If you're a manager, there's still a lot you can do to prevent people from falling into the trap and getting them out when they're in it. Here's four things we've learned work at Blaze:

1. Pair new employees with startup veterans in the first three months

Having great new team members learn from folks who understand your culture gives them exposure on how work gets done at your company and how to thrive over the long term. When they see senior folks asking for help and collaborating openly, it helps spread the kind of respect for self-limits that you want normalized. They start to understand that seeking support isn't a weakness—it's how high performers actually operate.

2. Help them define explicit boundaries and coach them on basic self care

Most people with the hero's complex are terrible at saying no and even worse at protecting their own capacity. Teach them to set clear limits on their work hours, their availability, and the scope of what they'll take on. It sounds basic, but these high achievers often need permission to protect themselves. This can start with you modeling sustainable behavior, like taking weekends off and not sending emails or Slack messages at night.

3. Scope their areas of ownership thoughtfully

Make responsibilities for new employees (under six months) big and ambiguous enough to feel challenged, but not so large that they'll struggle to prioritize effectively. The sweet spot is giving them something meaty to sink their teeth into without setting them up to drown in endless possibilities.

4. Provide regular outlets for ideas and concerns to relieve pressure

Create regular moments, from 1:1s to team forums, where the team can surface ideas and give feedback. Most of the proposals and suggestions will actually be great, even if they're not for "right now." And the conversations can help relieve the frustration that builds up when high performers feel like they're not being heard.

This Isn't Easy to Get Right

The truth is, we've lost talented people because we didn't recognize the hero's complex amongst standout new hires early enough. We didn't create the right environment for them to ask for help. We didn't scope their work properly or give them the support they needed. And we didn't pay enough attention when they did raise concerns or give feedback.

That's on us as managers, not on them as individuals.

The goal isn't to fix people who have the hero's complex. The goal is to create conditions where their drive and ambition can thrive without burning them out. Where their desire to excel becomes a sustainable competitive advantage rather than a ticking time bomb.

Because when you get it right—when you help these extraordinary people channel their intensity in healthy ways—they don't just stick around. They become the foundation of everything great you'll build together.