[throwaway838205]

(Longtime HN participant using a throwaway account.)

I'm half of a two-person startup. I have a wife and child, and my wife is chronically ill, so I end up doing a large share of the child care. And now one of my cofounder's parents has cancer. Given our family obligations and financial constraints, we both work absurdly hard to get everything done.

This is enough adversity to make anyone run the other way and bet on our failure (one reason I'm using a throwaway account). But I don't think it's that clear-cut at all.

I don't like it when people take the "adversity is an asset" argument too far, but in our case it has only steeled my resolve. Having constraints is helpful, up to a point. We deeply believe in our product, we know it materially improves people's lives.

Working more hours is not a scalable competitive advantage. We're going to succeed because we're smarter and have more guts.