Yes you can, if your primary motivation is making money and having a successful 'business' (business type or market is irrelevant to people with that motivation). You can definitely be successful with that strategy. But for many, loving the idea, or 'passion', is requisite for the amount of time and hard work it will take to succeed.

You don't have to be in love with the idea or the market, but you have to be in love with something. Otherwise, you might as well just get a day job.

That is code for "wow, this is way more work than I thought it was going to be."

But why would you want to?

(FYI: I'm one of those listed as "we weren't in love with the idea/market")

To make money.

That's a complete lie.

Most people spend most of their time working for somebody else, and most of them at the jobs they don't care for.

That's why when people win a lottery, the first thing they do is quit and do something they actually like - eat, travel, party, drive a nice car, sail, whatever. Almost none of them stay at their shitty job.

Hm. That argument seems to support the original line: they care about many things more than money. Once they have enough money, they turn to the things they care about. Before then, they were struggling to earn enough to accomplish any of the important things.

You're confusing the results of work with the results of spending the money that you make by work. Most people don't give a shit about their work and would stop working there the first chance they got. And of course people like the shit they can buy with the money.

So why do a risky thing like startup if you hate it?

I can understand that many people working for McDonalds hate their job, but it's no risky task, just quick money.

Absolutely, but your not going to put more than 8 hours a day into it. If that.

I've seen this all too often with co-founders I've had in the past (which didn't work out). They first love the idea and work on it with lots of passion.

As soon as they need to do the boring work (IE: 90% of the hard work involved in any business), interest is lost and they want to quit.

I call these people employees because they aren't willing to do what it takes to build and maintain a business.

they are researchers, not employees. Employees are the people you need to do drudge work in a professional manner.