Meanwhile, the geopolitical and economic situation worldwide didn’t make it any easier.

My topic—an in-depth analysis of the job market—was also a moving target.

Indeed, I started my operations right before the pandemic, and since then, the job market has experienced two significant transitions: the remote work revolution during the lockdown and the AI revolution afterward.

In the end, I kept on building and improving, never really feeling ready for shipping.

And that’s the problem: as an academic with a PhD, you don’t release a half-baked product. You just don’t.

In other words, you are never ready.

Piling It All On.

As if all this was not enough, I also kept on traveling between three countries on two continents, having a hard time deciding where to settle for life.

At the same time, your brain is like any other brain: it has the same reward system and suffers from a lack of dopamine if you keep on going for a long time without any dopamine shots. According to Schultz, Dayan, and Montague (1997), dopamine neurons fire for unexpected rewards and fall silent once rewards become routine.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, this reward circuit runs on dopamine: a burst of it signals that something important just happened, wiring the brain to seek out that action again.

And what is a dopamine shot? A smiling face of your client. A lavish pay for your invoice.

A full fridge. No debts.

Cash to pay a bonus to your people. Cash to take a flight to a nice place and recharge. You get the idea.

What Are the Basic Rhythms?

The reality: You have two years. If your brain is more resilient than the average, perhaps you may have three years.

After that period, you MUST start generating REAL revenue, not just peanuts here and there — or otherwise, all your steam and enthusiasm will gradually fizzle out.

It’s not even because of your runway shortening down — it’s because of much deeper processes happening in your mind and at heart. 

In fact, at some point, your body will get used to the permanent lack of dopamine; you will lose all your energy and fall into apathy.

What Do You Do About It?

So, you have to push yourself and go sell. You need to somehow manage to juggle selling and building despite the fact that it might feel impossible at times.

Unfortunately, money is a token of appreciation, relevance, and impact. And we all desire to be relevant and appreciated for our work.

Indeed, if you neglect milking your work for a long time, you will subconsciously find the world unfair and blind to your value. You so will start to feel repulsed by your own company.

Notably, the rhythm is quite similar to close relations with people. When you meet a new person, hormones, positive emotions, and “natural drugs” like serotonin, oxytocin, and whatnot will keep you going for the first two years. According to Diener, Lucas, and Scollon (2006), people adapt to most positive changes and drift back toward their baseline.

But then what? As a result, if the relationship is dysfunctional and doesn’t cater to your needs on multiple levels, it becomes a chore and dies.

Yes, there are exceptions: it took Figma or Notion almost a decade before they got successful on the market. According to Forbes, Figma spent nearly nine years — from its 2012 founding to its $10 billion valuation in 2021 — before it became design’s hottest startup. But come on…

Most founders just lose their steam and pivot. According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, roughly half of new establishments are gone within five years.

The Bottom.

Without knowing these dynamics, I hit the bottom at some point: motivation- and energy-wise. In fact, I felt like I was going through a soft burnout of sorts.

I was asking myself: ‘Natalia, you are doing exactly what you’ve always dreamt of doing, so what’s your problem?’

I wish I could say it’s the first time I’ve ever hit the bottom. But it’s not the first time.

In my life, hitting the bottom happens roughly every 3-5 years, and it looks like a Bitcoin cycle in negative.