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- Hey, everybody, today I have a very special guest, Mark Suster is here to talk about his experience with Adult ADD. (upbeat music) So like I said, today I have a wonderful and special guest, Mark Suster has taken time out of his very busy schedule to sit down with us and talk about Adult ADD. So, Mark, tell my viewers a little bit about yourself. - Sure, my name's Mark Suster, I'm a former two time entrepreneur. Before that, I worked in software for many years. And right now, I run a venture capital fund. We invest in early stage technology companies. - Very cool. Yeah and Mark has a wonderful blog, if any of you are in the tech space, and very curious about what he does, it's called Both Sides of the Table. I've been following it for many years, it's very informational, and it is not all just tech talk, sometimes it's just you sharing stuff, that's how I found out that he had Adult ADD, so... - Thank you, I think I had Child ADD, too, I just didn't know it. - That's part of my notes. - There you go. - What made you even think of taking the test, or going to see someone to see if you had it? What was that like, aha moment? - So, this is strange, I think for most people to know, but, I was 40. I'm 47, I was 40 when I found out I had ADD. And I found out in the simplest of way. My assistant at the time, her name was Laura Trion, she said Mark, you have ADD. (laughs) And I thought she was kidding of course, 'cause everyone jokes about having ADD, she's like, no, you really have ADD. And I said to her, it's not possible, I did well in school, I have a good career, I've run successful businesses. - Yeah. - No, I wasn't that kid. And she said, read this book, and she handed me a book called "Delivered from Distraction." And fine, I'll read your damn book. She was kind of a, I don't know, "new-agey", if I could say it that way. - Oh, yes. - And I'm like, fine. She goes to Escalon and all that, And I'm like fine, I'll read your damn book. And I couldn't put it down. And, it gave you a checklist, I'm gonna make it up and say there were 65 questions or whatever, and I read through it, and every one described me. And then I put it in front of my wife, and she's like... - This explains a lot. - She's like, I finally get it, and that was when I knew that I had it, and I started immersing myself in reading more about it, and wanting to understand me better. The realization was reading about successful people, like being able to cast myself in the role of a successful person with ADD. The book talks about the founder of JetBlue, I don't remember his name, and he worked at Southwest Airlines before that, and he was a member of the executive team, and they would be in executive team meetings, and people were just following process, following the rules, talkin' about stuff, but not getting to important stuff. And he would have a moment where, I describe myself as sometimes, like a Tourette's fece, like I can be in a meeting, and I can be totally fine, and everything's rational, and it's just not moving along, and then all of a sudden blurts out something like, well Jesus, can we just get to the point, and I'm like, oh my God, did I just say that? And that's how he was, and that's why he got fired from Southwest, because-- - I heard about this. - He couldn't work in the culture, and that's when he realized that he had ADD, or maybe he knew before, but that was the reason he couldn't work at Southwest. And the commonality is many successful, creative people, particularly entrepreneurs, are people who have ADD. They have an urgency about 'em, they have lack of ability to focus on tasks for a long period of time, but can get really immersed in stuff that they care about, and don't give up until they complete those tasks. So anyway, so reading about a successful protagonist in a book was also mind-bending for me. - Yeah, and I think that's the thing that's frustrating to me, and why I wanted to have you on, is that I think as children who get diagnosed, you're almost labeled as "the problem child", or like you don't do well in school, like when you said, when she told you, you're like, no, but I did well in school, and things were okay, and I'm successful, and you know, I'm a two time entrepreneur, and so I think my hope is to change that view, because part of it can almost be a gift-- - Yeah. - In the fact that you don't just rest on things, you won't just do the status quo, and I can't work in a big corporation, just sit there, these like four hour meetings that go nowhere. You want change. You want things to be working quickly, and well, and I think part of that is what makes certain people with ADD very successful.