It is true that a lot of love and passion needs to be poured into a startup. As Steve Jobs puts it, "because [doing a startup] is so hard, that if you don't [have the passion], any rational person will give up."
What's not true is that startups are the one and only way to pursue one's passion. By definition a startup's purpose is to find a repeatable and scalable business model. If you don't want to find a repeatable and scalable business model, you don't want to do a startup.
Instead, your passion may involve a business model that is not scalable or not repeatable. It might not be a business at all. Perhaps your passion can be better packaged as one of the following:
- open source project
- consulting firm
- blog
- lifestyle business
- non-profit
- vacation
- academia
- etc...
The nice thing about startups is that there are fair amounts of resources and support systems around building them. How do you know if a startup is right for you? Instead of saying "I want to do a startup in X", say "I want to find a repeatable and scalable business model in X", and see if it makes you wince.
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