How do you handle battle between self-doubt and hope/persistence?
kirse: I noticed you didn't get much response on here, but my best advice is to not root yourself in the outcome of the startup so much.It's tough to do (especially since we entrepreneurs are such dreamers and visionaries), but try to focus on enjoying the day-to-day journey of building, discovery, and learning more than the end goals and emotional dreams you have for the startup.If your primary source of motivation for doing a startup is this grand vision of "success" that is propped up in your head (multi-million-dollar exits, Lamborghinis, boats, houses, etc), your day-to-day perception of your startup's "success" will be like a small boat in a large storm... tossed around by every wave of good or bad news.  For me, I simply enjoy the challenge of building something, working hard, and "seeing where it goes".  So keep your expectations reasonable.I worked hard on a startup for ~2 years, starting in college and for about a year while I held down a 40hr/week job.  It was pretty clear that after multiple iterations and a splintered team that it wasn't going to succeed.  I know near the end I took a good week off to mentally disengage and try to look at it from an objective perspective as possible.  I talked it over with my co-founders and we ultimately decided it was time to pull the plug.Oddly enough, my first real business venture was a success, and my second one was a failure.  To me, giving up was much harder than succeeding, because I'm not one to give up easily.  I learned a lot from that failure though and am proud to admit to the people who ask that it was a failure, because it's an excellent story.