If you have a strong enough “Why”, then you can tolerate any “How”.
Wanting to be your own boss, or having the ability to freely travel the world are both a great “Why” to create the activation energy to take the risk and start. But in my experience, it’s rarely a strong enough motivator to help someone persist through 4+ years without any meaningful wins.
The strongest "Why" usually involves serving something other than yourself. For some founders I’ve invested in, it’s a specific group of people (e.g. patients with a particular disease), or protecting something specific about the natural environment. Those people I have seen tolerate extreme suffering - to the point that I have had to physically bite my tongue in conversations where I wanted to tell them to stop and give up (but I never did - better a cut tongue than adding my opinion/ego to their burden). Some of those founders ultimately failed, others found enough wins and are still going (and suffering), a tiny number experienced wild success.
So if you want to persist, then an interesting question is "Who" or "What" are you serving besides yourself?
A separate but related question is how long can your personal cash flow sustain this?
Good luck!
Wanting to be your own boss, or having the ability to freely travel the world are both a great “Why” to create the activation energy to take the risk and start. But in my experience, it’s rarely a strong enough motivator to help someone persist through 4+ years without any meaningful wins.
The strongest "Why" usually involves serving something other than yourself. For some founders I’ve invested in, it’s a specific group of people (e.g. patients with a particular disease), or protecting something specific about the natural environment. Those people I have seen tolerate extreme suffering - to the point that I have had to physically bite my tongue in conversations where I wanted to tell them to stop and give up (but I never did - better a cut tongue than adding my opinion/ego to their burden). Some of those founders ultimately failed, others found enough wins and are still going (and suffering), a tiny number experienced wild success.
So if you want to persist, then an interesting question is "Who" or "What" are you serving besides yourself?
A separate but related question is how long can your personal cash flow sustain this?
Good luck!