Heroics can exist without them being a standardized thing. There are occasions when you need people who are willing to move mountains to get something done, and demonizing those kinds of efforts and the people who engage in them will make them scarce when you actually are in need.
a founder should be 'trying to' make a quality product that fits a need, not 'disrupt an industry' - 'industry disruption' is a consequence, not a goal - if one is seeking the latter without focusing on the former, ones priorities are skewed, and likely for reasons of promoting one's own self-importance.
This 1000%.
The frequent use of the term "disrupt", just shows how much the culture has descended into degeneracy. When entrepreneurs and their backers are no longer making even a pretense toward things like progress, improvement, or even just running a profitable business, you know things have gotten bad. It seems like the model now is, "Hey, let's see if we can f--- up industry X, who cares if we actually improve anything or if our business is even viable, so long as we turn some established part of the economy on its head."
This is an extraordinary claim.
How so? I would argue that folks using millions of dollars in investment capital with no real goal other than to cause disruption, regardless of whether it helps anyone or even creates a viable business, is what's extraordinary.
Think for a second what a dumb goal 'disruption' is on it's own. That's what bored 15 year old's do to amuse themselves, they disrupt and break things simply to see something, anything, happen. As an earlier commenter pointed out, disruption is often a side effect of making a large change in an industry, typically in business this has meant changing something for the better.
When the side effect of causing disruption becomes the main goal of a business owner rather than creating value of some sort, I really don't know what to call that other than degenerate behavior.
Founders building potentially billion dollar businesses (not $10m lifestyle companies) need to have a psychotic drive to achieve that goal.
That often creates tough work environments in the early stages of the company. To many people, failing to build that billion dollar company is the same as outright failing completely. They’ll do whatever it takes to get there. I’ve worked with engineers and designers that like this type of environment. I’ve worked with others that thought they did until it came time to actually pull an 80 hour week.
EDIT: Several downvotes, but only one reply. If you have issue with anything I said I'd appreciate a response.
Maybe you meant something more like "extreme" ?
Both can be true. You've no doubt seen the CEO/psychopath studies.
Irrespective of whether one is building a potentially billion dollar business or 'only' a 10m lifestyle company, the goal and focus should still be on the usefulness of the product and fitting market need, and not 'disrupting an industry' with the product as a side goal - if it's the latter, it indicates the priorities are skewed; from experience, usually when 'heroics' are involved or priorities are skewed, it's ego to blame and not some external requirement.
Further, 'heroics' are context-dependent - if the external requirement actually requires what would be 'heroics' in a normal situation, 'heroics' are simply 'duty' in that case, and there exists a 'that case heroics' that would still be 'heroics' (and therefore indicative of likely-ego-driven skewed priorities)