One of the biggest mistakes I made as a founder happened early on — and I didn’t even realize it until much later. With more time to reflect and after watching hundreds of other founders go through the same experience, I’ve come to see this misstep more clearly: I rushed the beginning.
In the earliest days of a startup, there’s a rare and fleeting window. A window where you’re free — free from outside pressure, deadlines, expectations, and metrics. But instead of embracing this open space for exploration, I was eager to prove something. I wanted to prove I could build fast, get customers, raise money, and show that I was on the right path.
Looking back, I see how precious that early phase really is. It’s uncomfortable, yes. It lacks structure. You don’t have product-market fit, customers are still just ideas, and your roadmap is mostly guesses. But that’s exactly the point. This is the only time where you’re allowed to sit with uncertainty long enough to really learn something deep—to validate whether the insight you’re working from is truly worth devoting years of your life to.
Once you move past ideation, testing, and early discovery, the clock starts ticking.
Each of these milestones introduces more momentum — and more pressure. You lose the ability to slow down and think. You can’t easily step back and ask, Is this still the right direction? You’re moving, and movement starts to look like progress, even if it isn’t. To be clear, this doesn’t mean you can waste time and wander aimlessly without a disciplined approach. You need to move with purpose to test your hypothesis, narrow the market, refine your approach and uncover clear signals of urgent pain points from potential customers. If done with the right balance, this phase can dramatically improve the odds of finding product market fit and building a viable business.
We often hear phrases like embrace the struggle or embrace the journey. But what most founders overlook is how important it is to embrace the very beginning. That quiet, awkward, uncertain stage. That’s where the real foundation is laid. Don’t rush through it. Don’t be in such a hurry to prove something.
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