eating glass
Eating Glass
Startup-speak for grinding through a difficult, painful stretch — doing hard, unrewarding work because it's necessary, not because it's enjoyable.
When you'd see it: Founder narratives, startup retrospectives, investor pitch decks. 'The first 18 months were eating glass every day' signals that the speaker endured a genuinely difficult phase — and survived. Used to convey resilience and authenticity.
Why it matters: The phrase carries cultural weight in startup circles as a signal of toughness and operational reality. Hearing it signals that the speaker has firsthand experience of a startup's hardest phases, not just the highlight reel.
Common mistakes: Romanticizing the phrase. Eating glass is a description of a hard reality, not a virtue. When companies treat suffering as a badge of culture, they often normalize conditions that are actually damaging — burnout, poor management, structural problems that shouldn't be endured but fixed.
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