Interesting! One thing that stood out to me quite a bit is that you had a clear definition of what "success" means to you.
Startups can be wonderful, but only if you (I) learn to enjoy the process. I'm glad you were able to find a way to enjoy your day to day and not continually defer enjoyment to the future!
I think that at the end of the day it comes down to being raw and completely honest with oneself. Most of us have the huge privilege of having a say in where our lives are going and my fear is that we entrepreneur tend (or have?) to have some rose-color glasses and always assume that we'll be part of that 10% that makes it.
If after a naked-honest conversation with yourself starups is for you, I wish you all the success in the world and a fulfilled life!
The industry I'm in requires a ridiculous amount of pre-work before a client is willing to sign a paid contract (should've mentioned this is a B2B industry). I'm in the signing process with a client now, so will have a paying client and proper users later this year (high volume of users with this one client).
I def hear you that paying, validated customers gives direction and purpose to the whole enterprise. I'll focus on achieving that. The funding is more for the fact that I have major features that I can't implement myself while also rolling out to this customer.
I've noticed within myself some long-ingrained fear of failure, and this seems to manifest as dreading my work for fear of a suboptimal "outcome" (I don't know how to solve a problem, a project takes too long, rejection/setbacks on the funding front).
Any tips or strategies that have helped you shift your mindset to being more about "inputs" other than diligent repetition/journaling?
One thing that helped was acknowledging in my own mind that the worst could happen. I could fail completely. I could burn through all my money. I could let everyone down. I could embarrass myself. Whatever the worst was, I considered that could happen. Frankly it's likely to happen. Startups are hard as hell.
Then I considered I could just go back to working a normal job. Pays well, I get all my social status back. All these icky feelings go away. And I genuinely considered this. There is nothing wrong with that life. I loved those jobs!
What I found though, was that even in the face of all that risk it seemed a lot more interesting to try to do my own project.
But with those considerations I approached it a lot different. The daily risks feel like the activity more than whatever this may or may not look like in 10 years. I think this is better for the company too because it's possible to constrain yourself if you're convinced you already know what the end is like. Better to follow your own curiosity.
That's the theory anyway. Again, this is advice coming from someone who feels extremely unqualified to give it haha.
There is also a book by Carrol Dweck called 'Mindset' that speaks pretty directly to what you're asking about. You can get a pretty good idea of the concepts by googling fixed mindset vs growth mindset. The book itself has a couple slow parts but is pretty good overall.
Startups can be wonderful, but only if you (I) learn to enjoy the process. I'm glad you were able to find a way to enjoy your day to day and not continually defer enjoyment to the future!