I'm starting to be reticent to talk to random people about my startup. Every time I mention it, there's an hour long conversation in which people that are not my intended market try to prove to me that my market doesn't exist, that my product is crap. They might or might not be right, I'm not sure yet; but it's a futile exercise because neither I can change their minds nor can they change mine.

This used to depress me a lot; now not so much. I guess my skin is getting thicker, but at an incredible low speed. For those suffering in this way, you can get stronger, but it's so slow you might not notice it.

Recently, during one of these conversations, someone said: "Don't let us discourage you, we are just criticizing you because it makes us feel smart". It's been a few days and I'm still thinking about it. I'm thinking about my l'esprit de l'escalier response to it: "Yeah, everybody seems to want to put people down in this country, instead of finding a way to lift those around them". But I'm also thinking about what a great level of introspection that person had to spontaneously come up with that. I admire that.

It still hurts but I understand the exercise of being challenged by knowledgeable people, by your potential customer, even by potential investors. I'm not finding the value in these conversations with random strangers. It seems they always get combative because they are trying to put me down and I don't go down easily.

I feel that as soon as I have enough revenue for it to be proof of my market, I'll get horribly sarcastic: "Oh... you are right, this makes no sense. I guess I'll close down, return the money to my customers and go flip burgers in McDonald's.". Or maybe, once I'm not searching for potential customers constantly everywhere, I'll lie about what I do.

Does this happen to you? How do you deal with it?