The Startup Malaise Phase Makes a Lot of Good Founders Give Up

Why It Takes Years To Have a Weekend Breakthrough

Joe Procopio
4 min readDec 19, 2022

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image by dcstudio

Why do most successful startups seem like they became successful overnight?

Because they do. But the trick there, one that very few people understand, is that it often takes years for that overnight success to become a possibility.

If you’re like most startup founders and entrepreneurs, you’ve probably been frustrated, maybe even right now, that the machine you’ve built on top of your business isn’t working like it should if it’s ultimately going to be the success you initially envisioned.

The malaise phase of starting up is a natural phenomenon for almost everyone who starts their own business. It’s their personal path of hot coals to walk over, their own 40 days in the desert, and it’s enough to make most of them give up.

Don’t give up. Do something like this instead.

Freakin’ Eureka!

I have a side project called Teaching Startup, with a mission of making advice for entrepreneurs and founders more efficient, effective, and affordable, by reinventing how that advice is offered, constructed, and delivered.

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Joe Procopio
Joe Procopio

Written by Joe Procopio

I'm a multi-exit, multi-failure entrepreneur. AI pioneer. Technologist. Innovator. I write at Inc.com and BuiltIn.com. More about me at joeprocopio.com