When trying to start a company, your enemy isn't criticism, anger

Host: The co-working space was half-empty, lit by the pale glow of computer screens and the soft hum of overworked ambition. The city outside was sleeping, but here — in this glass cocoon of ideas — the night was wide awake.

Whiteboards covered in scribbles lined the walls: half equations, half dreams. The smell of stale coffee and old pizza hung like incense, sacred to those who worship creation.

Jack sat slouched in front of a laptop, its blue light washing over his face. A spreadsheet glowed like a battlefield of numbers. Across from him, Jeeny perched on a stool, her knees drawn up, watching him with that quiet fire she always carried — the one that made cynics sweat.

The air between them buzzed — not with romance, but with the raw electricity of two minds locked in debate, building and breaking something unseen.

Jeeny: (leaning forward) “Gil Penchina once said, ‘When trying to start a company, your enemy isn’t criticism, anger, or insults. Your enemy is apathy.’”
She smiled faintly. “He’s right. Passion, even in anger, means you’ve stirred something. But apathy? That’s the silence after the funeral.”

Jack: (without looking up) “Spoken like someone who’s never been publicly demolished on Twitter for launching too soon.”

Host: His voice carried both humor and exhaustion, like someone who’d burned out on brilliance more than once.

Jeeny: “Criticism means someone cares enough to notice. Apathy means the world shrugged and scrolled past.”

Jack: (closing the laptop) “You sound like a motivational poster.”

Jeeny: “And you sound like someone who’s forgotten what starting felt like.”

Jack: (meeting her eyes) “Starting felt like drowning with purpose.”

Jeeny: “And yet, you swam.”

Jack: “Yeah, until the investors decided I wasn’t Olympic material.”

Jeeny: “You’re still alive, aren’t you? Still building something?”

Jack: (half-smiling) “Now I build in silence. No applause. No noise. Just work.”

Jeeny: “That’s not silence, Jack. That’s devotion.”

Host: The rain outside began to fall — slow, rhythmic, like a heartbeat against the window. Neon signs from across the street reflected off the glass: Open 24 Hours. How fitting, Jeeny thought. Creation never sleeps.

She slid off the stool and walked toward the whiteboard. Her fingers trailed across the chaotic scrawl of arrows and words — vision, funding, growth, pivot. She picked up a marker and drew a single bold word in the corner: CARE.

Jeeny: “This is what he meant. Apathy kills faster than failure. When no one cares, even success feels hollow.”

Jack: “You think passion can save a bad product?”

Jeeny: “No. But indifference will bury even a great one.”

Jack: (standing, pacing) “You know what I’ve learned? The enemy isn’t just outside. It’s in here.” (tapping his chest) “Apathy starts inside you — when the fire runs out, when every ‘no’ starts sounding reasonable.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe the real startup is you. Rebuilding belief after it breaks.”

Jack: (laughing softly) “That’s poetic for a pitch deck.”

Jeeny: “Poetry and business share a root, Jack — they both begin in obsession.”

Host: The room flickered — a motion sensor light waking from the dark. It painted their faces in brief brightness, then faded again, as if testing whether they were still alive.

Jeeny sat back down, crossing her legs, eyes steady on Jack.

Jeeny: “Do you know why apathy scares me more than hate?”

Jack: “Because you can’t fight silence.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. Anger has energy. Criticism gives you edges to push against. But apathy… apathy is void. It doesn’t destroy you — it dissolves you.”

Jack: “The quiet death.”

Jeeny: “Of passion. Of purpose. Of the spark that makes you build when everything says stop.”

Jack: “So what — we just keep shouting into the void?”

Jeeny: “No. We make the void echo back.”

Host: The camera would linger on them — two faces illuminated by the blue light of the laptop screen, reflections trembling like ghosts in glass. The hum of machines became the pulse of the scene — electric, fragile, alive.

Jack: “You know what’s strange? I used to think apathy came from others — investors who didn’t reply, customers who didn’t care. But it’s contagious. When the world doesn’t feel you, you stop feeling the world.”

Jeeny: “And that’s when creation dies.”

Jack: “So how do you stop it?”

Jeeny: “You remember why you began. Not the pitch, not the plan — the pulse. The part of you that believed something should exist because it didn’t yet.”

Jack: “And if that part’s gone?”

Jeeny: “Then you rebuild it from the ashes of your apathy.”

Jack: “Sounds exhausting.”

Jeeny: “So is surrender.”

Host: The rain softened into mist, the sound fading into the low hum of electricity. Jack sat again, opening his laptop. His fingers hovered above the keyboard — hesitation, rebirth. Jeeny watched him in silence, the air between them thick with possibility.

Jeeny: “You know, Gil Penchina didn’t just mean startups. He meant life. Apathy is the death of motion — the end of trying. And trying is the only thing that ever made humans divine.”

Jack: “Then what’s our job?”

Jeeny: “To keep caring. Even when no one claps.”

Jack: “Especially then.”

Jeeny: “Yes. That’s when passion becomes faith.”

Jack: “And faith becomes rebellion.”

Jeeny: (smiling) “And rebellion becomes creation.”

Host: The camera would pull back now, rising through the tall glass windows, showing them small beneath the halo of city light — two silhouettes burning quietly against the sleeping skyline. The world beyond them was vast, indifferent, beautiful.

And in that luminous indifference, Gil Penchina’s words echoed — not as business advice, but as a creed for the soul:

Criticism is friction — it shapes you.
Anger is fire — it forges you.
Insults are noise — they remind you you’re being heard.

But apathy —
apathy is nothingness dressed as calm.
It is the stillness that kills.

Do not fear being misunderstood,
mocked,
or doubted.

Fear the silence
that follows when you stop caring.

Because passion —
in its chaos, its wounds, its mess —
is proof that you are alive,
and that somewhere,
something still matters enough
to fight for.