These virtues are paraded on the website of a new entrepreneurship-focused lobbying firm, the Cicero Institute. The organization started quietly last year, and is intended to advocate for start-up interests.

Its landing page is adorned with a quote from Cicero, a Roman philosopher-statesman who embraced much of Stoicism’s ethical systems while remaining skeptical of its metaphysics: “I have always been of the opinion that unpopularity earned by doing what is right is not unpopularity at all but glory.”

As stocks rise despite crises, as a new wave of wealth rises in the American West, and promotions and payouts come despite scandals, the old mantra that every start-up is going to save the world now rings hollow. But tenets of Stoicism — which can be interpreted to argue that the world and its current power structure are correctly set as they are — fit right in.

Is this really a thing?

Stoicism has been the preferred viral philosophy “for a moment” for years now — or two decades, by one count. The topic of Stoicism usually comes up in the Valley in terms of the maintenance of the personal life. Start-ups big and small believe their mission is to make the transactions of life frictionless and pleasing. But the executives building those things are convinced that a pleasing, on-demand life will make them soft. So they attempt to bring the pain.

“We’re kept in constant comfort,” said Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, in an interview on Daily Stoic, a popular blog for the tech-Stoic community. Mr. Rose said he tries to incorporate practices in his life that “mimic” our ancestors’ environments and their daily challenges: “This can be simple things like walking in the rain without a jacket or wearing my sandals in the December snow when I take the dog out in the mornings.”