Founders

career wise i think i'm a bit cooked on delayed gratification psychologically, esp. of the variety of like working/iterating on a startup for multiple years in stealth and/or without traction. not sure if i'm capable of doing that, but to an extent the ability to do that is what is required for outsized success

would posit this is somewhat consistent in the "brain" of our generation, esp with startup / build-in-public / twitter founder "cracked" culture becoming so widespread, it is v contrarian and perhaps psychologically difficult to quitely grind and stay focused for years on something you believe in. think many founders currently in 20s prob compensate for this by getting validation via attention, while they wait for validation via market (the real thing). 

shayne coplan good exception imo.

Being a founder is brutal. Success should neither be the motivation nor the goal—it should be the inevitable consequence of building something valuable. Otherwise, the weight of the journey will crush you in the long run.

Would you still be happy spending your life building something, even if it leads to no success? If the answer is no, dig deeper into what truly motivates you. Then nothing will be able to bring you down.

No, I think it’s unrealistic to say that we should be satisfied with continuous failure and no successes.

That said; you definitely need to love the journey and the process on a deep level, embrace the fails and learning opportunities and the wins as manifestations of the work you put in and the good decisions you made.

Purple 🟣 #134
Building ScoutGame & CharmVerse.io

Love to talk about new ideas, build and use AI daily

I didn’t say that. I meant that having success as a goal makes the journey much harder psychologically—unless you’re someone fueled by failure.

instead, having a deeper motivation for building helps avoid burnout and depression, and lets you see failures as the stepping stones they are.