I have been reading about founders for years now, and one thing I have noticed is that nearly every entrepreneur describes the early days of their company as fun. The brainstorming, the whiteboard sessions, the feeling that you are about to change the world. Elon Musk agrees with that part. But he is unusually blunt about what comes next.

“When starting a company, usually the beginning is fun. Then, it’s hellish for a number of years.” — Elon Musk, as quoted in Eric Jorgenson, The Book of Elon, p. 86

That single sentence captures something most startup advice glosses over. The fun part ends. And what replaces it is not just “hard work” in the motivational-poster sense. It is a specific kind of suffering that Musk has described with a metaphor I keep coming back to.

Photo by Steve Jurvetson, Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY 2.0.

The Glass and the Abyss

Musk credits the metaphor to his friend Bill Lee: “Starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss.” It sounds dramatic, but when you break it down the way Musk does, it becomes remarkably practical.

Staring into the abyss is about survival. You are constantly facing the possibility that your company will die. This is not paranoia. This is statistics. As Musk puts it: “Most startups fail. It’s like 90 percent — it could be 99 percent of startups fail” (Jorgenson, The Book of Elon, p. 87). Every founder lives with that reality every single day. The abyss is not a metaphor for sadness. It is a metaphor for extinction.

Eating glass is about discipline. It means doing the work the company needs, not the work you enjoy. Musk is explicit about this distinction: “You’ve got to work on the problems the company needs you to work on, not the problems you want to work on” (Jorgenson, The Book of Elon, p. 88). Most founders I have read about — including Musk himself — are visionaries who love the big-picture thinking. But survival demands that you spend your days on cash flow, on hiring, on fixing a broken supply chain at two in the morning. That is the glass.

And if you refuse it? Musk does not hedge: “If you don’t eat the glass, you’re not going to be successful” (Jorgenson, The Book of Elon, p. 88).

What I find compelling about this framing is that it is not about suffering for suffering’s sake. It is about choosing purpose over comfort. The glass is not punishment. It is the price of building something that matters.

Cash First, Vision Second

One of the most counterintuitive things Musk has said about startups is this: forget the grand vision when you are starting out. Focus on money.

“You have to be focused on the short term and money coming in when creating a company, because otherwise the company will die.” — Elon Musk, as quoted in Jorgenson, The Book of Elon, p. 86

This is the same person who wants to colonize Mars and transition the world to sustainable energy. But he understands that none of those ambitions matter if the company runs out of cash before it gets there. I wrote about how Musk applied first-principles thinking to break down problems to their fundamentals — and this is a perfect example. The fundamental truth of any startup is simple: no cash, no company.

This is something I think more aspiring founders need to hear. The stories we celebrate are about vision and disruption. The stories we do not tell are about the weeks when a founder did not know if they could make payroll. Musk has lived through both, and he is honest about which one consumes more of your time.

Sleeping on the Factory Floor

If the glass-eating metaphor is about what founding a company demands mentally, Musk’s factory floor stories are about what it demands physically. During the most intense production crises at Tesla — what he called “production hell” — Musk did not just work long hours. He moved into the factory.

“If there was a crisis situation, I slept on the floor. I slept on the floor outside the conference room so they could see I was there.” — Elon Musk, as quoted in Jorgenson, The Book of Elon, p. 92

Photo via Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY 2.0.

He has described waking up smelling like oil and iron filings, his body wrecked from sleeping on concrete. He has admitted to doing “many many stretches of one-hundred-hour weeks — true one-hundred-hour weeks, sleeping roughly six hours per day” and added plainly: “I would not recommend that. That’s for emergencies” (Jorgenson, The Book of Elon, pp. 91-92).

What makes this more than a war story is the reasoning behind it. Musk was asking his workers to give everything they had. He could not ask that from a corner office.

“I was asking people to really go all out. I can’t expect them to go all out if I’m not doing the same” (Jorgenson, The Book of Elon, p. 93). This connects directly to how Tesla built the Gigafactory in Berlin — the same relentless execution, the same refusal to delegate the hardest problems.

The General on the Front Lines

Musk frames his leadership philosophy through a military lens, and it is worth paying attention to, because it explains decisions that otherwise look irrational.

“Think about war. Do you want the general in some ivory tower or on the front lines? The troops fight harder if they see the general on the front lines.” — Elon Musk, as quoted in Jorgenson, The Book of Elon, p. 93

He takes this literally. “Whatever the people at the front lines are doing, I try to do it at least a few times myself” (Jorgenson, The Book of Elon, p. 94). He references Napoleon — wherever Napoleon was, his armies fought at their best. The principle is ancient: never ask your troops to do something you are not willing to do yourself.

This is not about ego. Musk is candid about what being CEO actually means: “What you actually get as CEO is a distillation of the worst things going on in the company” (Jorgenson, The Book of Elon, p. 95). He does not describe the role as glamorous. He describes it as a responsibility he accepts because he feels accountable for the companies he leads.

Where the Pain Threshold Comes From

Understanding why Musk can endure this kind of sustained pressure requires going back to his childhood in South Africa. At age six, he walked ten to twelve miles alone across Pretoria to get to a cousin’s birthday party after escaping his nanny. He could barely read the road signs. He later called it foolish — but the determination was already there. That same child, a few years later, was “almost beaten to death — within an inch of my life” at school (Jorgenson, The Book of Elon, p. 96).

I covered the full story of Musk’s departure from South Africa in an earlier piece. The childhood was difficult in ways that would break most people. But Musk’s interpretation of that period is revealing: “Adversity shaped me. My pain threshold became very high” (Jorgenson, The Book of Elon, p. 97).

He is not romanticizing the suffering. He is saying it prepared him. When you have already survived real physical danger as a child, sleeping on a factory floor during a production crisis does not feel like the worst thing in the world. The glass is easier to eat when you have already tasted worse.

Fear and the Worst-Case Scenario

What strikes me most about Musk’s philosophy on startups is how directly he addresses fear. Most founders I have read about dance around it. Musk runs straight at it.

“Many people fear starting a company too much. What’s the worst that could happen? You’re not gonna starve to death; you’re not gonna die of exposure — really, what’s the worst that could happen?” — Elon Musk, as quoted in Jorgenson, The Book of Elon, p. 89

This is the framework I keep coming back to. The abyss is real, the glass is real, the hundred-hour weeks are real. But the actual downside of trying and failing? You go get a job. You are fine. The fear is disproportionate to the risk.

And on the other side of that fear sits the possibility that you build something genuinely important. Musk acknowledges that failure is bad — “failure is not good,” he says bluntly. But he adds: “If something is important enough, then you do it, even though the risk of failure is high” (Jorgenson, The Book of Elon, p. 89). He chose to learn from his failures, though he has also said — with characteristic directness — that “given the options, I prefer to learn from success.”

The SpaceX story is the ultimate proof of this. Three rockets failed before the fourth launch changed everything. Musk was nearly bankrupt. The abyss was right there. He ate the glass, and it worked.

What This Really Means for Founders

I do not think Musk is telling people to destroy their health or sleep on factory floors. He explicitly says he would not recommend hundred-hour weeks — those are for emergencies. What he is really saying is this: know what you are signing up for. Building a company is not a lifestyle choice. It is a commitment that will test everything you have. The problems will be ugly, the hours will be long, and the outcome is never guaranteed.

But here is what makes it worth it. The difficulty is not random. It has purpose. Every piece of glass you eat is a problem solved that keeps the company alive. Every night on the factory floor is a message to your team that you are in this together. Every hour staring into the abyss is an hour spent refusing to let something important die.

If you are thinking about starting a company, Musk’s advice is not “do not do it.” His advice is: understand what it costs, decide if the mission is worth that cost, and then commit fully. The founders who make it are not the ones who avoid the glass. They are the ones who eat it willingly, because what they are building matters more than their comfort.

I hope this piece gives you a clearer picture of what Musk means when he talks about the reality of founding a company. It is not a fairy tale, but it is also not a horror story. It is a choice — and for the right person with the right mission, it is a choice worth making. Feel free to come back for more, fellow techies.

Sources

• Jorgenson, Eric. The Book of Elon. Pages 86-97. Quotes attributed to Elon Musk from interviews compiled by Jorgenson.
• Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. Ecco, 2015. Background on Musk’s childhood and early career.
• Musk, Maye. A Woman Makes a Plan: Advice for a Lifetime of Adventure, Beauty, and Success. Viking, 2019. Context on the Musk family dynamics.