the first two years are unglamorous. let the story be choppy

A founder in my accelerator paused his raise, had two years of runway, and was “soul searching” about a pivot. He kept trying to make the new direction connect to the old one. The deposit widget led to the identity insight which led to the new product. A clean arc.

I told him to stop. You can say we tried this, it didn’t work, we’re doing something completely different. Maybe you go build a meme coin launcher. It’s fine. The story doesn’t have to make sense right now. In hindsight you’ll smooth it. Everyone does.

This is sunk cost dressed up as narrative. You worked on something for months and you want it to be featured somewhere. Let it exist. Five apps use it, doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to die or become the company. The mid ground is it just sits there.

The founders you admire forget their first three years on purpose. The ones who tell the truth say it was showing up daily, keeping systems running, making sure the customer was happy. Almost embarrassing to say out loud. But that’s how every one of them started, and the graph was flat for most of it. Then one insight, one network effect, and it goes vertical. The podcasts only show the vertical part.

So don’t announce the vision. Not to friends, not to family, sometimes not even to yourself. The moment you say it, you start measuring against it, and a million dollars in profit at year two feels like failure. It isn’t. On your own, in your own company, that’s a massive deal.

And don’t borrow the struggle either. “A startup has to be hard so I’ll quit my job and earn nothing for two years.” That burns you out and it also keeps the smart people away. The smart people who aren’t founders join you when there’s money. Zerodha was bootstrapped the whole way for this reason.

the call where i said it best

Same founder said his way of thinking is that the whole story has to fit. I said that’s exactly the problem. You’re writing the retrospective before the thing happened. Do the thing. The story writes itself later, and it’ll be better than the one you’re forcing now.

do this this week

If you’re pivoting, write the two-line version: we tried x, it didn’t work, we’re doing y. Send it to your investors as is.

the line to remember

let the story be very choppy. eventually, in hindsight, you can smoothen it.