The process doesn't matter

Avoiding "effort" and "style" points

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Were you good at work and school? I was. Being good in those environments has ruined us.

Because in work and school, we got rewarded for “effort” and “style” points.

Effort points are points you get as a result of doing the work and showing your work. These points improve your grade in school, and show your bosses that you are putting in the hours and doing your best.

Style points - how papers and presentations are graded - reward form, structure, logic, coherence. They are points for “following the process.”

Capitalism generally (and entrepreneurship specifically) awards exactly zero points for effort or style. Yet early-stage founders who succeeded in school and work - environments where these points are the primary reward mechanism - spend their days as if someone is keeping track of these points.

How we do this:

• Doing endless customer discovery interviews to “validate” an idea - effort points.

• Doing a bunch of sales calls that don’t convert, but not changing your pitch - effort points.

• Avoiding sales with a bunch of tasks that seem important but aren’t - effort points.

• Working insane hours because that’s what you did at McKinsey - effort points.

• Following some stupid startup process out of a book instead of “full-contact-sporting” the only thing that matters - effort points.

• Focusing on likes/impressions/engagement on social media - style points.

• Focusing on fundraising numbers or team size - style points.

• Avoiding the unfolding process because you’re worried you’ll have to admit to being wrong in the past - style points.

• Feeling guilty and unmotivated because your startup isn’t where it’s supposed to be - style points.

• When someone asks you how you’re doing - “So busy!” (effort points) or “Crushing it!” (style points).

My experience is that most pre-PMF startups waste north of 90% of their time doing a bunch of things that score high on style/effort but make no meaningful progress.

Instead, we craft long to-do lists, roadmaps, and Notion documents of things that don’t matter. And we attack each of the useless items on our to-do lists as if someone is going to give us a cookie if we appear to try our hardest, regardless of the outcome.

When this doesn’t work, we push harder and look for some new-and-improved process to save us.

I say this not because I’m above it. It’s the exact opposite - I can’t trust myself to avoid the comfort of pursuing style/effort points. And so I have to deliberately narrow my focus in two ways:

1. A theory of what matters: The only thing that matters is finding intense demand. It doesn’t matter HOW we find this - we just need to find it, by any means necessary.

2. A theory of execution: Build a single-item to-do list, so I can’t NOT focus on the most important thing. Do that thing, then I’ve earned the right to figure out the next thing.

These are, in a sense, baby gates I build for myself that force me to avoid effort/style points and make real progress.

If you find yourself working very hard and realizing you’re not pushing on what matters most… consider these baby gates for yourself.

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PS:

• Come join my next Bootcamp! It starts June 2, and will be 3 weeks where we help you find PMF & hit your takeoff moment. You can work with me 1:1 to debug your sales calls and pipeline. Here’s info, and grab 15 min with me to see if you’re a good fit (link). Usually fills up early!

• Waffle has now helped a bunch of venture-backed startups build their infrastructure - an infrastructure tool purpose-built for the venture path with built-in scalability, security, observability, and control. For a limited time we’re setting up infra for startups, as a service, for free. Grab time with me here to see if you’re a fit!