It's not so much brainwashing founders - well I suppose it is with the young 'uns that come in and are told this is an easy way to riches just follow steps 1, 2, 3.
It's just the reality of choosing this career path, which some of us old enough to know better, still choose - for whatever our reasons.
This is why one should be skeptical when dealing with the investor side of ht equation. They will talk a good game, about their love for entrepreneurs, but what they love is those who make them money. They don't really care about those left burnt out. Similarly the media which fetishizes startup success/failure and creates the false narrative, from the safety of a paycheck and never having put it all on the line.
Yep. I'm not saying the lure of startup success is easy to defend yourself against, but we should be more vocal about when it's time to stop or get help when things aren't going right.
I don't think you're wrong there. I think a more honest dialogue about how things really are, when things are going bad, and better support structures would benefit us all. Sadly I think you'd find admissions of struggle are perceived as weakness by the VC community (who'd deny this), or that's certainly what most entrepreneurs believe, so they feel that reaching out for help would be a net lose.
I think of the analogy with head injuries in the NFL. They're the cost of doing business if you want to exceed, and look at what happened to Alex Smith when he took a break to recover from a concussion. Benched. Replaced. Now out on his ear.
So I agree with you, I want to get there. Just don't know how to get there from here. Make sense?
Yeah, absolutely. I like the analogy, too. But, unlike in the NFL, I think there are multiple roads to a successful business. One doesn't need to be a rocket that either lands on the boom or explodes in space :)
It's just the reality of choosing this career path, which some of us old enough to know better, still choose - for whatever our reasons.
This is why one should be skeptical when dealing with the investor side of ht equation. They will talk a good game, about their love for entrepreneurs, but what they love is those who make them money. They don't really care about those left burnt out. Similarly the media which fetishizes startup success/failure and creates the false narrative, from the safety of a paycheck and never having put it all on the line.
[Insert obligatory MAN IN TH ARENA quotes here..]