> It's much more comfortable to be the person that "could be X" than to be the person that tries to actually do it.

Brilliant insight.

Reminds of me this, from Theodore Roosevelt's Citizenship in a Republic:

> It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Good luck, and go get 'em.

I agree, and I'll supplement with this;

>> But from now on, I'm either gonna be a successful founder, or I'm not. And if I'm not, I'll have to deal with having broken with the expectations that people had of me.

Don't worry, they expected you to fail. They hoped you'd succeed, but expected failure. Statistically most businesses fail, and failure rates are faster when your customers are VCs not users.

I say this as encouragement, not criticism. Accepting that failure is (by far) the most likely outcome is both realistic and freeing. The anxiety of failure is gone.

Frankly, your lack of marketing experience would worry me. Without the ability to reach users (much less customers) how can you do anything but fail? New businesses are not bounded by technical ability (especially in the age of AI) they are bounded by Marketing.