When you're building something from scratch, the reality is often brutal. In the early days, there's no infrastructure to point to—no team in place, no prototype sitting in a garage, nothing tangible you can show investors or partners. You're literally starting from absolute zero. That's the gap between the narrative people construct later and what was actually happening on day one. The difference between "we had a vision" and "we had absolutely nothing" is exactly where most ventures collapse. Those founding moments are where you discover if you're solving a real problem or just chasing an idea.