Founder Reality vs Startup Mythology: Passion Is Overrated

John Bradley "JJ" Jackson

21 Apr 2026 • 1 min read

I love my horse but he does pay the bills.

I have worked with hundreds of startup founders over the years. Almost all of them were passionate. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that passion is not rare. It’s common. Very common. And it’s often misplaced. The mythology kind of goes like this. Follow your passion and the rest will take care of itself. It won’t.

Fail. Crash. Burn.

I have seen passionate founders build products no one wanted, target markets that didn’t exist, and hold on far too long because they believed passion would carry them through. It doesn’t.

The reality is simple. The marketplace doesn’t reward passion. It rewards solutions to real problems. Passion may help you endure the journey. It may give you energy. Can you say endorphins? It may even make you more persuasive. But it does not create demand.

If there is no customer, no real problem, and no willingness or ability to pay, then what you have is not a startup. It’s a hobby. For example, I am passionate about my horse, but he eats a lot of hay and he does not have a debit card.

That may sound harsh. It is not meant to be. It is meant to be useful. Because the sooner a founder understands this, the sooner they can redirect their energy toward something that might actually work.

Passion is a great companion. It just isn’t a strategy.

P.S. "Entrepreneurial passion" is defined as the intense positive emotion entrepreneurs feel for self-defining, meaningful activities, fueling innovation and persistence. It drives resilience through challenges like financial hurdles and failure, crucial for long-term success. Passion focuses on three key roles: inventing new opportunities, founding, and developing ventures. (Source: Oxford University Press)