Nobody talks enough about how lonely the early days of building a business really are

Welcome to /r/Entrepreneur and thank you for the post, /u/citationforge! Please make sure you read our [community rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/about/rules/) before participating here. As a quick refresher: * Promotion of products and services is not allowed here. This includes dropping URLs, asking users to DM you, check your profile, job-seeking, and investor-seeking. *Unsanctioned promotion of any kind will lead to a permanent ban for all of your accounts.* * AI and GPT-generated posts and comments are unprofessional, and will be treated as spam, including a permanent ban for that account. * If you have free offerings, please comment in our weekly Thursday stickied thread. * If you need feedback, please comment in our weekly Friday stickied thread. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Entrepreneur) if you have any questions or concerns.*

I would rather deal and manage with my own bullshit than to deal with someone else’s bullshit.

Early days? You will feel lonely for the rest of your life. Even more so the more successful you become. Most people around you cannot relate to your experience and never will. The people who can, are advisors, accountants M&A people and other entrepreneurs. But these normally are not your friends.

Hardest part for me and I’m not even an extrovert.

Well, that's the emotional roller coaster of every business. No matter if a startup or just a small consultancy venture. One day you are in the "I'm gonna get rich" the other day - "I'll die in the trash". What helped me - surround yourself with at least 2-3 like-minded entrepreneurs. That's the people who can really understand your situation.

I got a 'well done, keep up the hard work' reply from Chat GPT the other day, and honestly, I needed it. It's hard not having other people around to bounce ideas off of, but the alternative is having to work with other people, so I'm happy to suck up the loneliness and make friends with the robots.

Wow, this is like straight out of my head. My older brother with a great job with work/life balance once confessed that he thought I was just dicking around and not doing anything ambitious. I can see that from the outside. Living in dad's basement, always on the laptop, never going out, refusing to quit your shitty day job to find something better. The worst is that you feel kinda like you're in a time capsule. While the whole world advances, you feel stuck inching your way to a better future. Everyone else around you took the easier routes so their success just seems...effortless. I'm super proud of all of my friends but it does sting when you see them going on big vacations with the family or settling in that new home. It reminds you of what you're missing out on and really leads you to wanting to quit. Then there's the fact that you're almost 40 and given the economic conditions, you know you'll have no chance re-defining your career because by the time you re-upskill into something else, you're almost 50 and no one wants to seriously hire a 50 year old, let alone for an entry level job. It slowly dawns on you that there are no other options and you must succeed in creating your job, one way or another. Otherwise it's working a deadbeat job till you die. In a lot of ways it feels like Andy in Shawshank redemption. You know you're better than this. You know you didn't deserve this, but life doesn't fucking care. So like Andy, you have to roll up your sleeves and force through the sewage just to get to freedom so you can force the world to recognize what you're doing. Been locked up going on 5 years. Good news is, we created a revolutionary new approach to developing stories with ai. Bad news? We're still broke and moving at a snails pace and there's so much to do, it's challenging to gain lift off. We have some paying customers who are willing to tolerate the jankiness of the app and love what we're building, but replicating those customers is the greatest challenge we're facing at the moment and balancing that discovery process with the demands of development. We have the mvp, but without the smooth effortless ui that's needed so that's what we're working on and it's what keeps me going. I see the path ahead and it is clear as day to me. I know where we want to take this. It's just gonna take forever, since what we're building isn't just an app. It's a path to a radically new business model for indie creators of all kinds. This is THE moment for us to seize right now. Not yesterday or tomorrow, but now at this very second. People on the outside don't see this though. They just see a 37 year old loser living with his dad who is strangely obsessed with something they're not even considering wrapping their heads around. I'm certain they think I'm on a lot of drugs or suffering from some serious mental heath crisis. But it's none of that at all. I got a vision back in 2012 for what the future was going to be and I'm so certain that this vision is real, I must actualize it. No questions.

Here’s a secret, as someone who employs 1000+ today and has multiple exits It’s always lonely You’re ultimately the only one accountable of the results the entire time You can’t pass on the blame, you have to take the hard decisions and be the bad guy Nobody will ever truly share the journey with you Once real money is involved you will have to deal with betrayal of people you trusted And once you get success some people will think you got lucky, not realizing that you slept on the floor of the business for months on end and postponed gratification for a decade Your problems will have nothing in common with your peers, you won’t be able to have support from them, you’ll need a new support group for that

[deleted]