There is a version of startup culture that treats suffering as proof.

If the founder is sleeping badly, carrying the company on their back, answering messages at midnight and thinking about the business during dinner, they must really want it.

We have confused intensity with effectiveness for a long time.

They are not the same thing.

Building a company is hard. It probably should be.

You will make decisions with incomplete information. Good people will leave. Deals will die at the last minute. Products will fail. Investors will say no. Customers will ask for things you cannot build.

There is no version of entrepreneurship where all of that disappears.

But there is an important difference between doing something difficult and building a company that requires you to suffer in order to function.

Founders should know the difference.