Your friends hate to see you disillusioned, so they let you perpetuate the self-illusion that what you're proposing in your project will work. You best friends are the ones who disillusion you.

Yeah, I got that. What I meant was that although that makes them useless for my project, I love them for it at the same time.

Ditto.

The policy I have been following for my new start-up is to not proactively tell friends. Instead I'd rather they tell me "omg I hear that's your website!". More of those I get, more it validates my idea and marketing. This works especially well at a uni environment and for my startup which is very super focused on my uni.

I have always instinctually kept my business and personal lives separate. Maybe this is why.