Startups are hard!

Startups are hard. No, startups are damn hard.

Contrary to popular belief, there are no clouds of money that float around and rain on anyone that utters the phrase, "I'm a founder!" Unfortunately, starting a company and raising money is just as hard as ever; it's just that the investors don't have as much leverage as they used to, but they still have a lot.

Most reporting on startups suffers from a terrible case of success bias. Nobody wants to report on a dying startup unless it is to highlight another company that has come along to kill them, but that actually turns into a piece about the better company and not the dying one.

Startups that die, rarely talk about it publicly because it is frustrating, embarrassing, and most of the time the people involved want to forget the whole mess and move on rather than sit around talking about the fact that they failed.

Most people don't want to admit that startups are hard, either, because to admit something is hard is to admit that you don't know everything there is to know about a certain topic and to display weakness. If there's one thing you do not want to do as a startup, it's appear weak. Only the strong survive.

But guess what: startups are hard. At times they are soul-crushingly hard. I am not afraid to admit this anymore. I am not afraid to talk openly about it with peers anymore. So, this post serves as a counterpoint to all the recent postings alluding to the fact that anyone can suddenly decide to be a founder and the next week find themselves swimming around in a kiddie-pool full of money.