It takes some insane bravery or total cluelessness to try to make it in this industry. There are way easier things one can do. I think many of us do it because we can’t imagine doing anything else. If it was purely for the money, we’d be doing something else.
Discussion
Purely for the money sounds hollow but it is often true that money is a proxy for success: making what people want. A lot of the time in this space we are condescending with what people want, since they are clueless fiat normies or whatever we call them. I don't want to build for the masses necessarily though definitely for a much wider demographic than cypherpunks.