The Truth About Startup Life Nobody Tells You with Joseph Kim
By Michail Katkoff, a founder, investor, and ex-hustle addict who once thought grinding harder was the answer. Spoiler: it wasn’t.
Last week, I recorded a podcast with my good buddy Joseph Kim. The plan was to catch up on industry news, games, monetization, team structures, that kind of thing. But what actually happened was something more real, more revealing, and frankly, more useful: we ended up talking about the parts of company-building that don’t show up in pitch decks or post-mortems. The stuff people don’t post about on LinkedIn. We discussed what it costs, physically, emotionally, and psychologically, to try and build something from nothing.
Joe and I have both been through the founder's crucible. Well, I’ve been, and Joe is still very much in it.
We’ve raised capital, managed teams, navigated investor pressure, and dealt with the isolation that comes from pretending you’re okay when you’re anything but. We’ve ridden the emotional rollercoaster of thinking, this might actually work, only to find ourselves awake at 3 AM asking, what the fuck am I doing with my life?
🎧 You can listen to our full, unfiltered conversation here.
And if I’m being completely honest, I think that second feeling, the emptiness masked as drive, is far more common than anyone wants to admit.
Hustle or Hiding?
Before I had kids, I worked six days a week, and I wore that like a badge of honor. That was my cheat code. Just work more. Outlast, outgrind, outperform. “That was essentially how Deconstructor of Fun was built,” I told Joe. But what I’ve realized, now that I’m a father of two young daughters, is that all that work wasn’t just about ambition. It was also about avoidance. Avoidance of discomfort. Avoiding asking myself harder questions about who I wanted to be outside of work.
Modern hustle culture rewards relentless output, but what starts as ambition often morphs into avoidance. For a lot of high performers, work becomes a place to hide from broken relationships, fragile identities, or just the fear of stillness. You feel useful, so you must be doing something right. But really, you could be just moving fast enough to drown out the doubt.
Sacrifice Without Alignment Is Just Waste
During the podcast, Joe opened up about spending months away from his family while building LILA Games in Bangalore. “In this last month,” he said, “I’ve had one call with my wife, two calls with my daughter, and that’s about it.” He wasn’t trying to avoid the most important people in his life. He just… forgot. That’s how deeply immersed he was. That’s how consuming the work had become.
We call that a sacrifice. But who exactly are we sacrificing for? Is it really for our families, for some future legacy? Or is it just another rationalization to avoid admitting we’re addicted to progress, even when it comes at the cost of the people we love?
Joe’s take was painfully honest: “I actually like the suffering and sacrifice involved with what I’m doing now. I haven’t even thought about the financial payoff to make it right with my family.” Instead, he says, it’s about creating something valuable and important. At least, that’s the story he’s told himself. And I get it. I’ve told myself the same story.
But here’s the truth: suffering only makes sense when it’s in service of something meaningful. And sacrifice only pays off if you’re still around to enjoy the reward.
The Team That Breaks You
When I started my own company, I assumed I could replicate the culture and momentum we had at Fun Plus. That was the best job I ever had: fast execution, anti-corporate culture, clarity of vision, trust from the CEO (shoutout to Andy Zhong, the best in the business!), and a shared language built over years of working together. But in my startup, I made every mistake I now warn others about.
We had a founding team with no shared history. We operated across multiple countries. We were remote by necessity, not by design. And we mixed AAA DNA with mobile-first execution. The result? Months and months of storming and no signs of forming. It was chaos. And I got PTSD from my own cap table.
That experience fundamentally changed how I assess teams and how I invest. I told Joe, “I don’t think many investors, even though they talk about good teams, really understand what a good team is.” They invest in CVs. They invest in perceived traction (FOMO). They use phrases like “charismatic founder” or “great operator,” but often their gut feeling is just someone else’s conviction repackaged.
When the Job Becomes the Identity
There’s a moment in every founder’s journey where the company stops being a project and starts being a mirror. Your mood tracks your metrics. Your sense of worth spikes when your DAU spikes. When the business struggles, so do you. And when it ends, you don’t just lose a cap table, you lose a version of yourself.
“Startups don’t just take your time,” I told Joe. “They take your identity.” And if you’ve never had to grieve the loss of a startup, you won’t understand what that sentence really means. You don’t get that version of yourself back. You just hope the next version is built with a bit more clarity, a bit more intention, and a lot more balance.
Where I’m At
These days, I work differently. I’m still building, but in phases. I run Deconstructor of Fun with a great team. I work with mid to large companies in fractional roles. I consult. I say no to things that don’t fit. I say no a lot, actually. And more than anything, I try to remember that every yes I give to work is a no to time with my two lovely daughters, who, for this very brief moment, want to hang out with their dad.
This isn’t about retirement or checking out. I’m not done. There will be another company. I’ll build again. But I’m not going to throw myself off the same cliff and hope I survive the fall a second time.
What I’ve Learned
If there’s one thing I’ve come to believe, it’s this: startups can make you rich (1/1000 chance), but they rarely make you whole.
So if you’re a founder, or thinking about becoming one, ask yourself what you’re really trying to prove. Because once you’re inside the machine, it’s hard to get perspective. And the machine doesn’t care about you. It cares about velocity, growth, and survival. You need to care about the rest.
Joe asked me, “If you imagine yourself on your deathbed, what do you want to be proud of?” It’s a grim question, but one I come back to often. And I’ve got a pretty good mental image: a tombstone that says, He worked really hard. That’s it. That’s the fear. That’s the trap. Because if that’s the story people tell when I’m gone, I know I got it wrong.
There’s still time to rewrite that story.
