Ask HN: As a single bootstrapper, how do you deal with the pressure?

> programmers are just "coder monkeys"

Wow, how condescending ( the family, not OP). Is this notion isolated or widespread?

My family thinks I am a Tech Ninja, and almost all my Gym friends, many of who are in blue collar jobs, really look up to me.

> then you should not have told them about your business.

Meh, as if OP is to blame for how unsupportive his friends and family are.

In my opinion, you _should_ tell them. You should also tell them how you hate it that they're being so unsupportive. If they don't change, I'll echo what others said and re-evaluate your relationship with them....

Maybe you're selling it wrong, or presenting yourself inappropriately. Namely, if I want to climb everest, and I walked up a local hill - it would seem silly to say "Look everybody at me I'm on my way to climbing everest!" - even though that could be a true statement.

Maybe you need to be more modest about describing it, especially if you can't handle the feedback.

Tell them to suck it.

Intellectually, you're on the entrepreneurial path, with a purpose. How you emotionally defend yourself is also part of the entrepreneurial path - we work more hours for less money (on average) because we "control our own destiny" which implies of sense of ownership over one's life that you can't get elsewhere working towards someone else's bottom line. That's probably a myth, but it's an important one for maintaining our psychological health while under the stress of under-delivering. Don't be confused here - as an entrepreneur, you will ALWAYS feel like you're under-delivering, whether on time, or on traction, or on product, or on revenues, or on team, or on awareness... That's an unfortunate part of the path. But it's also an important part of the drive to improve the product, improve the team, etc. Entrepreneurs unfortunately also have a high rate of depression - I'm not adequately versed in those personality types to make any assessments as to why. But as an entrepreneur, I can tell you that, personally, I face that stress every day and yet carry on because I feel like my work is important. I'm not building follow-on products - I'm trying to build first-to-market products, also with a purpose. So either that purpose has to carry you through these tough defensive discussions and resulting stress, or that purpose isn't sufficient, and you'll drop the product and/or the title entrepreneur. If you're going to own your own path, you either do it wholly, or you don't. Trying to figure out a middle path will kill the average person. Don't be average.