Regardless of the market, the product, or the team, the story structure remains. Paul Graham charted the arc in a whiteboard drawing called the startup cuve, now since turned into books, how-tos, and thinkpieces. But as in the hero's journey, or Kurt Vonnegut's Man in a Hole story arc, the startup monomyth requires a struggle. Performing startup requires rugged individualism, just as the American Dream requires arriving in a land of opportunity and achieving success through hard work and determination. For performing startup, the land of opportunity is the market ripe for disruption, the hard work is shipping code, and the success is fundraising, traction, and power.

Though there are many forms and scales of success, the story of failure is common. The perception of struggle, however, is key to the performance of startup and how it absorbs failure. Startups face the "trough of sorrow" while coasting on borrowed money but perform s if they are frontiersmen in a hostile environment. Failed startups that perform startup well achieve soft landings in the form of talent acquisitions, or easy fundraising for the founders' next ventures. To perform failure correctly, it must be in awe rather than spite. While primarily procedural and commonplace, a failed startup's path is always a journey, and the journey is always incredible.