Founder Therapy
The 3 Cardinal Sins of Startups
Hi all —
Renamed this newsletter to “Founder Therapy,” because everyone says that’s exactly what this is. I aspire for this to be the antidote to all the startup BS out there, helping you stay sane & focused on building a great business.
One common thing I see founders wrestle with: A bunch of loud people who seem to “have it all figured out.” Some founders stop checking LinkedIn or Twitter, because they don’t like how it makes them feel.
Here’s the thing: Nobody has it figured out. Every fast-growing company is a trainwreck… as is every slow-growing company. Anybody who says otherwise is trying to sell you something.
As I’ve written before, the startup community is failing founders. Today, I’d like to propose the 3 Cardinal Sins in the Startup Community.
These Cardinal Sins are intended to make you feel worse about yourself, so that you change direction, spend money, and generally do dumb shit. This is a huge problem - you’re operating from a place of fear AND making bad decisions. Not good.
If you’re aware of these sins, you’ll see them everywhere. And instead of feeling bad about yourself & your startup, you’ll just ignore the dingoes who are trying to profit off founders’ insecurities.
Cardinal Sin #1: Founders hurting other founders
When a founder’s had any measure of success, they’ll get interviewed in a bunch of places and share their story + startup advice.
The Cardinal Sin? When founders pretend they have it all figured out, and that the path was easy & straightforward.
This is (1) historical fiction and (2) massively harmful to you, the early-stage founder in the pain cave.
This is harmful because these founders know better. When you talk to them candidly they say, “yeah it’s kinda a shitshow behind the scenes, but we have to tell a good story.”
We should hold ourselves to higher standards. We know it’s a shitshow, we’re in the pain cave, we are overwhelmed, stressed, and sleep-deprived. We shouldn’t pretend it isn’t & actively harm other founders. Don’t make this hard thing even worse for them.
This is Cardinal Sin #1 because it IS SO harmful. We should know better.
Cardinal Sin #2: Absolutists who claim there is only ONE true path to a successful company
Any time you see someone saying “the old way is dead, here’s the new way,” tell them to kindly fuck off.
I’ve nearly killed my companies so many times because credible-seeming people said that the ONLY way forward was:
Product-Led Growth
Community-Led Growth
Becoming a media company
Organic social
Creating a category
ABM
Horizontal SaaS
Vertical SaaS
Experimentation
Customer Discovery
Raising industrial VC rounds
etc
This is all bullshit, generally written by people who want to sell you something. Many of these things have merits in specific circumstances, but are cyanide otherwise.
This is all so dangerous because it sounds right and compelling. When you’re a founder, you want to defer to experts who seem to know what they’re talking about. And absolutists never lack confidence.
Every time I’ve followed these people’s advice, I’ve gotten screwed. This has led me to get so annoyed, I’ve decided the only way to actually know what’s real is to build a first-principles approach to startups. (This is taking me years, and is arguably a dumb career move, but ffs SOMEONE has to do it.)
Cardinal Sin #3: Armchair experts who haven’t been in the founder’s seat, & make a living preying off founder insecurities
There’s an industrial complex around startups. It feeds on your fear, doubt, and existential angst.
Think: Many accelerators, executives, consultants, agencies, VCs, “gurus,” influencers, etc.
They have their frameworks & best practices, and have honed their pitch to be EXACTLY what you want to believe… and when they don’t work, it’s because of you, hopeless founder. (In Talebian, they are Antifragile at your expense.)
You’ll spend a lot of money and give away a lot of equity before you realize this. And by the time you do, it might be too late.
If you see someone who seems to have all the answers, appears ready to ascend to heaven any instant, but hasn’t been in the founder’s chair and you feel bad about yourself whenever you see them talk (and desperately wanting to believe what they promise)… be wary.
There are many great people who support founders too, of course. It’s hard to tell who’s great - but when you understand Cardinal Sin 3, it ain’t hard to spot who’s not.
—
Nobody’s going to come clean up the startup community for us. At very least, keep these 3 Cardinal Sins in mind, so you can stay sane. Share these sins with other founders so they stay sane too. And if you feel particularly spicy, feel free to call people out whenever they commit one of the Cardinal Sins.
This shit is hard enough. Don’t let Cardinal Sinners make you feel worse.
- Rob (still fuming about the state of the startup ecosystem, and procrastinating on figuring out PMF Camp 2.0)