Please understand, though: it's not that someone is worse-off than this startup founder. There's always someone worse off. The unemployed factory worker is in a far better position than an impoverished rural Chinese farmer. It's that most people are worse-off than the startup founder. Even most Americans.
Is it fair to expect someone in his position to have perspective?
I think if you ask him about the failure six months or a year later, a resilient person would be able to put it in perspective, but not while it's happening.
It is exactly clear to me how unhappy this sentiment makes startup people on HN, and that's fine. I take no offense.
Where do you draw the line and why there and not elsewhere? What's "proper pain"?
To be honest, I'm somewhat on your side and tend to take the "shut up and grow up already" mentality regarding people whining (suffering) about painful life events, but that view does not answer the above question reasonably, it just ends up denouncing whatever you personally cannot withstand or are annoyed with.
I personally don't get worked up about that kind of self commiserating sentences.
One could similarly make the argument that a factory worker in the midwest should get some perspective and see how bad the kids with swollen stomachs and vultures overhead have it. Obviously that's not fair.
This is a person who committed a couple of years, a good chunk of capital, and a good relationship for an idea. And on top of that, they gambled their pride - to try so hard and still fail is a defeating feeling. Especially when people around you are succeeding at the same game.
Admittedly this is all presumptuous, but that's the point. For all we know this could be a work of fiction. Or the author might have struggled through all of this and then some. It seems similarly presumptuous too to conclude that the author has a privileged perspective.