Running a start-up is like eating glass. You just start to like the taste of your own blood.
Interpretation
Starting a business is extremely challenging and painful, but you learn to endure it.
Sean Parker's metaphor compares running a start-up to an excruciating experience akin to eating glass, highlighting the severe struggles and sacrifices entrepreneurs face while building their businesses. This vivid imagery suggests that the emotional and physical toll can be so intense that one becomes accustomed to the pain, signifying resilience in the entrepreneurial journey.
In practice
In a motivational speech to aspiring entrepreneurs.
Human beings thrive on action. Stagnation does not wear well with us. We are said to have our origins as hunter-gatherers. We run and we chase. We are problem-solvers. We must be continuously tested and we continuously test ourselves. And it will not end until our lives end because of life itself.
There will be days when the stuff is not flowing freely. What you do then is MAKE IT UP!
Sometimes you just have to jump out the window and grow wings on the way down.
When I was 5 and playing against 11-year-olds, who were bigger, stronger, faster, I just had to figure out a way to play with them.
We have our hands, we have our brains, we have the challenge all around us, and we have within (from whatever source) the will to strive. That is enough; there is no need to assert 'belief' in that which we do not, as yet, know.
Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened.
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