Startup Lessons

Doing the Bare Minimum

I think quite often, those who are most successful in academics and big tech are the ones who went “above and beyond” in school. They did everything to perfection — that is why they got such high marks.

That perfection leads to failing marks in startups. You cannot go above and beyond when you have 10 pots on the stove. When you focus on perfecting one — you let all the others burn or boil over. You need to get comfortable doing the bare minimum — only what is necessary to get across the finish line.

You often hear the saying “Rome was not built in a day” as a founder. But I think there needs to be an important clarification here. I think it should be changed to “Don’t build Rome — you can’t.”

As someone who sets high goals for myself, I am ok with “Rome not being built in a day” — but I still try to build Rome. I take it as a challenge. I am just ok with it taking a ton of time and effort from myself.

I think the realignment should be to build a tent today — perhaps leading to a shed tomorrow. These are minimal things that easily get destroyed when a storm blows through — but that is ok. This is similar to what MapQuest founder Chris Heivly says when to “build a fort.”

Sometimes I wonder if some of the best entrepreneurs are the ones who may be a little bit lazy — or at least think creatively about how to go about doing the least work. As someone who has been told to “never be afraid of hard work” and to “face tough challenges head-on” this was a foreign way of thinking to me. The best route forward is not necessarily the one filled with the most challenges and pain — even for your own personal growth.

Debt and Risk

In a startup, you have to be comfortable with going into debt and exposing yourself to risk without a dependable outcome. Of course, this is most adequately illustrated on the financial side (which I understood going in). But I had to work through this on the technical side.

I was obsessed with having ZERO technical debt. I was implementing testing, scalable schemas, and conscious algorithms. I performed well on my Big Tech interviews because I was good at this. But, you cannot plan a couple years in advance when the next month is uncertain. You just may have to get it out there at first.

There is a little bit of a compromise here. Sometimes, I wonder if ignorance is bliss. Maybe not having foresight into the technical challenges is a blessing in disguise for a founder just getting something off the ground (perhaps why Paul Graham argues to do things that don’t scale). But on the other hand, really good technical founders can then scale the company up after a successful launch.

Openness/Flexibility vs Persistence

There is a paradox here — and founders have to learn how to walk the tightrope.

At what point does pivoting turn into spinning? One one hand, you have to “listen to your customers” and “be coachable,” responding to the market. Yet, on the other hand, the founder carries the vision and has to dictate the direction.

It is hard to figure out when you should keep pushing in this direction, when you should realign to a different path, and when you should quit. There is never a right answer.

Startups are like Ugly Babies

Most will uncomfortably stare at it from a distance (how admirable of you!), some will give you advice, very few will get close enough to help you hold it.

As a founder, you ultimately brought this baby into the world and it’s your responsibility. But sometimes, it can get burdensome to carry that by yourself. Occasionally, you want others to help carry that weight with you. Finding a community of investors/advisors/fellow founders who can help you in your weak human moments is essential.

Distinguishing the Technical, Experiential, and Existential Needs

I like to divide my brain into these categories. The “technical” describes the way I use my brain as a muscle. It is the part that is used when I code, play chess, or solve a tough math problem. When I do these things, I am flexing my brain like my biceps.

The “experiential” describes the way I am present in my surroundings. It includes my emotions (I feel happy or sad), but encapsulates the way I feel and respond to my external environment. When people drift through life, they tend to gravitate toward pleasure and away from pain in this mode of thinking.

The “existential” describes the way I find deep meaning or fulfillment in life. It is not immediately obvious, it requires internal and external analysis. It requires your spirit, it requires philosophy.

When companies have problem-solutions, I think they fall into these categories. A lot of really good tech products exist in this “technical” domain. They help the muscle of our brain solve tough problems — like calculators, excel spreadsheets, and AI. I think our AI revolution will attempt to replace the way we use our brain purely as “a muscle” — like coding, math, medicine, etc — all those noble pursuits described by Whitman. This is an evolution similar to the car replacing our need to run or walk to destinations.

I think that companies in this domain tend to have a very well-defined problem-solution. They can replace the brains of the human workers who would normally do these jobs — like truckers, business analysts, or software engineers. As an engineer, I may use ChatGPT as a product that fills a technical need — helping me write functions and carry the cognitive weight of algorithms and debugging for me.

The experiential defines a way we can streamline or improve an existing experience. It’s like flying first class, buying a nice car, skipping the line. I think about my experience as an engineer, using a product like Vercel with NextJS. The experience of web development is improved, I can deploy at a click of a button. Everything seems entirely streamlined.

Data visualization is another area that improves our experience of knowledge. There is the raw excel spreadsheet, but the way we can quickly experience this process is greatly improved by its aggregation into colorful charts.

Finally, I think that companies that address certain existential needs are perceived as “visionary.” Oftentimes, they do not have very well-defined problem-solutions at first. This is because they do not fit within our existing behavior — instead, they change it. Because of this, I think these products are not understood — or deemed as “crazy” at first. They are completely unproven, they are risky, they are not valid. It is understandable.

To me, I think of products like social media or the iPhone. How do you define a problem-solution for these products in a world where they do not exist? There is a fundamental issue with the problem of induction and the emergence of a black swan. Today, I stare out onto the street, watching people walk with their faces buried in their phones. But no one would believe today’s quantifiable reality of “screen time engagement” as a realistic business proposition 40 years ago. It touches on much deeper existential desires of social connection, meaning, and entertainment that transcend quantifiable business.