Yep. I said it.
Happy Gilmore might be the best movie about startup burnout that’s ever been made.
Let me explain.
In the movie, Happy is completely convinced he’s meant to be a hockey star. It’s his dream. His obsession. He’s all in.
There’s just one problem: he’s terrible at hockey.
He can’t skate. His game sense is a mess. He’s constantly getting into fights. But there’s one thing he’s really good at: his slap shot.
And that one strange, overlooked talent ends up making him surprisingly... brilliant at golf.
What does this have to do with startups?
So many founders start out like Happy.
We’re convinced we’re supposed to be “hockey players.” We have a vision for a specific market, a defined product, a problem we think we have to solve.
We go all in, time, energy, money, reputation.
And when it doesn’t work? We don’t pivot. We grind harder.
We mask the stress, the disappointment, the grief of failure with rage productivity, over-optimism, or numbing routines.
Just like Happy, our reaction isn’t reflection, it’s anger.
Anger at the market, at the users, at ourselves.
But sometimes… we stumble into golf.
The Pain of a Pivot
There’s this deeply uncomfortable moment when you realize that what you’ve been building, what you’ve suffered for, was the wrong arena.
And worse?
That your weird niche skill or feature set actually fits perfectly somewhere else.
Some new space.
Some emerging market.
And that’s a mind-bender. Because to succeed there, you have to let go of the story you told yourself. You have to stop being a hockey player and just be good at golf.
Founder Truth: The Search for Meaning Can Conflict With Momentum
This is the part no one talks about.
When you finally start succeeding at something new, really succeeding, your brain sometimes refuses to believe it.
Why?
Because it doesn’t feel like what you trained for.
It doesn’t match your story.
That’s when burnout really kicks in, not from failure, but from dissonance. From winning in a way that feels off-script.
Happy Found a Way Forward. So Can You.
At the end of the day, Happy doesn’t become a hockey champion.
But he does become a legend in a totally different game.
And along the way, he reconnects with his purpose, stops fighting everyone, and finds peace, because he starts showing up as who he is, not who he thought he was supposed to be.
Founders, this is your reminder:
Success doesn’t always look how you imagined it.
Sometimes you’re a hockey player with a golf swing.
That’s not failure, that’s your edge.
Burnout isn’t always about exhaustion.
Sometimes it’s about misalignment.
Sometimes it’s about refusing to leave the wrong game.
And sometimes?
The slap shot you’ve been practicing all your life is meant for something else entirely.