Thanks for reading the twenty-fourth issue of The Advantage. This week is about a question most founders never stop to ask themselves: not what do I want, but which version of the hard life am I actually signing up for.

I love this clip because it is one of the better founder reminders I have heard in a while: there is no universally right path, but there is a cost to every path. Jimmy Carr and Chris Williamson get at something it took me years to learn the hard way, which is that you do not just choose a company. You choose a game, a scoreboard, and a set of pains, and the trap is borrowing all three from the people around you instead of choosing your own.

Then in the Practical Edge, a tool every one of you already has and almost no one is using right: the free, brutally honest advisor sitting on your laptop. Let us get into it.