A story about a great startup that never even started (or why you should)

Let me tell you a story about a great startup that never even started.

This story may or may not be inspired by real events. Any resemblance to real founders, living or pivoting, is purely coincidental (or inevitable).

The founder, let’s call him Sam, got a great idea. It was all he could ever think about.

About the colour of the buttons in the app. About the revenue that would pour into the company’s bank account. About the change it would make in the world. About how good he would feel seeing happy users using the app daily.

It was a great idea indeed.

He would be a great founder.

Of a great startup that never started up.

See, Sam was afraid to fail. He was afraid to be told “I don’t need this”, “it’s too expensive”, “your app is shit”.

So Sam never tried.

Because as long as it stayed in his imagination, it was still a great idea and he still felt good about himself.

It made Sam really angry and sad when he saw someone else building what he wanted to build. “Hey, that’s my idea,” he thought. “I could make it better. But I’m too late now. I’ll just think of another great idea.”

Don’t be like Sam. Ideas are nothing, execution is everything. It’s better to try and fail than to dream about trying and never failing.

Failure is a valuable experience. Second startups are a lot easier. There’s a reason why investors prefer investing in 2nd, 3rd time founders, no matter the outcome. Sure, exits are great, but lessons learnt from a failed startup are worth their weight in gold.

Just start, don’t worry about the outcome.

Talk to your potential users. See what hurts them the most. Build a quick fix (don’t think about the whole app, just a quick fix), test, repeat. Prioritise problems that people would pay to make them disappear. You’ll learn a lot more valuable skills building pain-killers than building nice-to-haves.

Have fun and be okay with failing.

Failing is just a word describing the end of the project. There’s only two outcomes: you either “fail” and close it down with bad results or “win” and sell it (or IPO).

But your whole path could look like this:

Describing the end outcome with the word “failure” means nothing more than just how it ended.

It does not describe the months or years of building.

See the chart? It goes up and down. All of those “wins” were moments where you’ve done something right.

Collect them and cash them in during your next project.

Think about the downs too and why you had them. Try to fix that next time.

Just start. You won’t gain any experience with just thinking about your great idea.

Made it to the end? Hit reply and tell me what you’re building - or what great idea you’ll turn into a real startup after reading this).

Till next time,

Val

PS: No AI was harmed in the making of this newsletter. What you’re reading are the fossilised remains of genuine human overthinking, preserved for future generations.