There is a particular exhaustion that only founders know. It is not physical, though it sometimes presents that way. It is not the tiredness of too much work, exactly. It is the tiredness of carrying the entirety of an idea; its past, its present, and every possible version of its future in a brain that also has to remember to eat lunch. Trust me, I never remember to eat lunch. Oops.
Nobody puts this in the pitch deck.
What the Numbers Say
A 2022 study published in the Journal of Business Venturing found that 72% of entrepreneurs report experiencing mental health challenges; anxiety, depression, or burnout at some point in their founding journey. For context, that is higher than the reported rate among emergency room physicians. Uff.
Starting a company, statistically, is harder on your mental health than working in an emergency room. Let that sit for a moment. And yet the cultural narrative around entrepreneurship remains relentlessly aspirational. Rise and grind. Sleep when you're dead. Embrace the chaos.
The chaos does not care whether you have embraced it. It will come for you either way. The only question is whether you have built the psychological infrastructure to meet it.
On the Difference Between Vision and Fantasy
Both involve imagining something that does not yet exist. The distinction is in what happens after the imagining.
Fantasy is self-contained, it provides comfort through its vividness. An individual who spends most of their energy in the imagination is functionally, not building anything. They are writing the acknowledgments page of a book they have not yet started.
Vision is different. A real vision generates immediate implications. It tells you what to do today, what to stop doing, what conversation you have been avoiding. The future is specific enough that the gap between here and there becomes a workable problem rather than a pleasant daydream.
