The Mirror Test: What Every Founder Needs to Confront with Chris Deaver

Founder Unfiltered - What Founders Think But Never Say · Sep 3, 2026 · 46m

Chris Deaver spent his career shaping culture inside Apple, Disney, and Dell. Then he went out on his own and learned what that culture work actually costs a person.

In this conversation, Chris and I get into what "brave" actually means when you're a founder with no big company behind you. We talk about the mirror test, a principle from his book that pushes you to get quiet enough to ask what you actually need to do differently, instead of copy pasting someone else's playbook. We go deep on the difference between being brave alone and being brave together, why deleting priorities is harder…