We’re talking about the loading time of the sim in this topic. So yes login and loading of preferences are required during startup i think. Why it takes 40 seconds is unknown to us because we have no technical inside knowledge so this is guesswork.
It checks for updates, which i can also understand because the ability to use the online functionality (the sim is built around that functionality) depends on it. The client version must be compatible with the server version.
Then i think it might load and check the scenery in the Community folder, which is also required because if you want to verify the integrity of the mods while flying it would probably cause issues?
Then it probably has to load the navaid/airport databases for the world map, the aircraft for the selection page, connect to the weather servers to show info on the world map, all kinds of things.
I think we are underestimating the complexity here.