In my view, being told "it get's harder" and "you will fail" etc is the opposite of demotivating. When things are going great, what use is motivation anyway?
When things are tough is when you need motivation. And the type of motivation you need is motivation to be stoic. That's exactly what this type of advice is.
It would be a very tough world for founders if "great ideas", smoothly executed, led to living at a decent level. Startups make sense because of the chance of a 10000x outcome. Otherwise, it's a losing proposition to begin with, there are much much better ways of living at a "decent level".
Of course that's only the financial part of it. There are other, better reasons to do a startup.
When things are tough is when you need motivation. And the type of motivation you need is motivation to be stoic. That's exactly what this type of advice is.
It would be a very tough world for founders if "great ideas", smoothly executed, led to living at a decent level. Startups make sense because of the chance of a 10000x outcome. Otherwise, it's a losing proposition to begin with, there are much much better ways of living at a "decent level".
Of course that's only the financial part of it. There are other, better reasons to do a startup.