How do makers and founders feel an appreciation in their work?

Maybe a friend of yours could just look around and see how many people haven't achieved what she already has. I mean, for majority building a startup is so hard that they don't even think about it, and a friend of yours did, she's building something valuable and something that can generate money, how many people actually dare to do this?

This is an interesting story. What is even more intriguing is how your friend sees success. I call it the 'entrepreneur's identity standard of success'. What is 'success' to her personally? Everything else that she does comes from it. The meanings that she gives to herself guides her entrepreneurial actions (i.e. the decision to discontinuing her startup). If you want to know more about this, you can read my book where I provide many examples from start-up founders.

I just look at my work and think to myself "It's not working. Yet" :) In my opinion, we should divide our work into the smallest pieces possible, because then we will be able to clearly see what works and what doesn't, and thus we will see progress that we can already appreciate.