I'm about 2 years into building a business. The craziest paradigm was definitely going from having a huge salary, winning awards and accolades with regularity and having status in a community to having no salary, nobody pats you on the back and being viewed as "another startup guy".
You've really got to be okay with being alone with yourself and you have to have abnormal levels of self-assurance to make it out alive. When the dark thoughts come for me, I get high and go running / yoga. If I didn't have this outlet, I probably would have spun out into a negative, obsessive abyss and bowed out long ago.
One additional thing I've noticed is that if you build technology, and it takes a while until it's ready enough so you can start making money -- then, your friends and
acquaintances will eventually think that what you're doing is utterly silly and that you don't understand this, but that they do.
You've really got to be okay with being alone with yourself and you have to have abnormal levels of self-assurance to make it out alive. When the dark thoughts come for me, I get high and go running / yoga. If I didn't have this outlet, I probably would have spun out into a negative, obsessive abyss and bowed out long ago.