Every overnight success has a prologue nobody tells. The years of unglamorous building get compressed out of the story because they make a worse headline.
Believing the myth is corrosive. It sets founders up to quit when their own timeline does not match a fairy tale that never happened.
The real pattern is slow, then sudden.
Why the Compression Hurts
When you only see the sudden part, you mistake a long process for a single moment.
The work that looks like luck in hindsight felt like grind at the time.