To Those Who Were Stronger Than They Should Have Been... I Saw You

This article is for you...

A message to those who walked away from their ventures exhausted...

To those who spent years of their lives pursuing something they truly loved.

I know you well...

I know those for whom the project was never just a company, an investment file, or a business plan.

It was a journey.

It was a dream.

To them, it contained an entire life.

They believed that this exhaustion was only the beginning.

Hope was the fuel that kept them moving through every challenge, every hardship, every sleepless night, every ounce of fatigue and burnout.

They genuinely believed that one day the difficult years would become a beautiful story, and that those who never understood their anxiety would one day applaud their success.

That is why they endured more than they should have.

Far more.

They woke up early.

They traveled.

Sometimes they went to bed early—not because they were rested, but because sleep was an escape from relentless pressure.

They recalculated their numbers dozens of times.

They studied marketing, management, cash flow, and finance.

They tried to appear steady, even on the days when they were terrified of everything.

They waited for their first revenue the way a drowning person waits for the light of a distant rescue ship...

Like a father waiting for his first child.

Like a student waiting for final exam results.

And when it finally came...

It wasn't enough to save them.

Yet it wasn't disappointing enough to convince them to stop.

This is one of the cruelest places in the life of a founder:

To remain suspended between hope and exhaustion.

Not successful enough to finally feel at peace.

Not defeated enough to simply walk away.

They lived in that gray zone that slowly consumes years of a person's life.

As time passed...

Something inside them began to fade.

Not the dream—

But the strength required to carry it.

Eventually they learned that the market does not always reward the most dedicated.

Some ventures do not fail because the idea is bad, but because their founders exhausted themselves long before the idea reached the right moment.

There are losses no one hears.

The loss of speaking with excitement.

The loss of changing the subject whenever someone asks about your project.

The loss of watching an idea you once loved become something you can no longer bear to look at.

The hardest part of a failed venture is not the failure itself.

It is the feeling that, somewhere along the journey, you lost a part of yourself while trying to make it succeed.

Mohammed bin Saleh

Interested in Management and Finance