Start-ups and Emotional Debt

I have worked at a "startup" for 6 years where I have been, primarily, the only developer. It has been extremely taxing to say the least. I started in my early thirties. Sometimes I feel like a fool. Sometimes I worry about what I will do next. I do hope to never again have this similar experience of being the only one doing all of the truly hard (and it is hard) labor of creating a system when the reward is little more than a paycheck. I wasn't a founder, but I often think that the workload I have received is nothing short of one.

If anything, I think it isn't the experience of a startup that is terrible so much as the emotional burnout that often seems to result from being in one. I think everybody in their youth should experience it just to see how far they can go. I would only recommend that they don't do it in a situation where they are the only one steering the ship :) It can lead to lots of sleepless nights and tremendous amounts of pressure, but I would imagine that sharing the load with a couple other people would make it a lot more "fun" as well as providing all of the educational benefits available for participating. Nothing is better for developing your style as a programmer than having to program a lot over a long period of time. There are more opportunities to make mistakes in a startup which means there are more opportunities to learn. I would say it is far better than a corporate environment, which I have also had the pleasure of working in.

I agree start-ups have become in vogue recently and many young, impressionable 20 somethings (myself included) get caught in the Tech Crunch celebrity of it all, but the person you're describing is exactly the kind of person doing start-ups for the wrong reasons.

Start with your passion and build a business around it. If the business end never works out, at least you got to work on something you really enjoy.

Much harder said than done. Many people don't know what they're truly passionate about until their 30-40s.