Elon Musk was asked what running a startup feels like. "Eating glass and staring into the abyss of death." Literally eating glass. He explained that a founder's actual job is to eat the problems nobody else will touch. The fun work gets taken by the team. Whatever is left, the lawsuits, the payroll crisis, the impossible customer, the co founder conflict, lands on your plate. Your diet becomes exclusively the company's sharpest problems. And the abyss part. He said for years you wake up knowing there's a meaningful chance the whole thing dies. Not an abstract chance. A specific, calculable, staring at you chance. You carry it to dinner. You carry it to bed. It's the first thing that greets you in the morning. He said this while worth billions, which is the part people miss. The glass eating never stopped. It scaled. The problems at SpaceX in 2008 were payroll. The problems now are congressional hearings and orbital mechanics. Different glass. Same meal. Everyone wants to be a founder until they read the menu. There's one item on it. The people who succeed aren't the ones who avoid the glass. They're the ones who develop a taste for it.