Why Should Founders Enjoy the Day-to-day of Building?

Immad Akhund says a founder has to enjoy the journey, because the work lasts too long to run on the highs. His third startup went through four full pivots, each one a start from zero, so the fourth company has felt closer to a seventh or eighth major idea. Across about 20 years of building, what holds is liking the ordinary day: writing code, doing product work, talking to customers, and thinking up the next thing. He was still writing some of the code when the previous company was acquired, and in another life he would have been a software engineer.

Celebrating the wins, or letting every setback drag the day down, works against that. Enjoying the ordinary work is what supplies the energy and the sticking power to keep going. Five of the eight original people at Mercury had already worked with him for five years at the previous company. All five still work at Mercury, and the shared stretch with them is now 14 years. He is going to be doing something with his life, so if a startup is actually enjoyable, he will keep doing one.