The Founder's Paradox

I’m learning there is a strange duality of mind required to be a founder. And once I realized it, it completely changed how I think about my startup.

It is the balancing act of being hyperfocused on a singular vision for your business, while remaining opportunistic for when better ideas or methods present themselves.

In some ways it’s like being a race car driver with bifocal glasses.

With one lens you look out on the track ahead with laser focus — that is your core idea, your baby, the thing you're betting will change the world. But you must also mind your peripheral vision, in case you catch a lucky glimpse of an alternate route or shortcut that might get you to the finish line faster.

It’s funny because most advice you’ll hear about launching a business will fall into one of these two categories.

It’s either: "Believe in your vision. Ignore the doubters. Push through."

Or it’s: "Stay flexible. Pivot when needed. Follow the market."

It probably depends who you’re asking. Maybe a bit on how big your grand vision is and how far along you are with it. But ultimately both schools of thought matter.

In fact, you need both sides to survive. But not in the mushy middle-ground way that people often suggest.

Instead you should think of it like quantum mechanics.

Your startup exists in two states simultaneously — both absolutely certain of success and completely open to failure. You must genuinely, deeply believe your specific solution is THE answer, while maintaining the intellectual honesty to recognize when it isn't.

This isn’t about hedging bets. It’s about being able to reach your hands out and hold onto two opposing thoughts:

“This idea is definitely going to work” (and)

“This idea might totally fail”

I remember going through the realization early on when we launched Uptrends.

We had built a web-app that tracked which stocks were trending in the news / social media, and we were the first to bring something like this to market for retail investors. We were convinced, maybe even delusional, thinking that something like this would completely change the world.

Later we realized that the underlying technology we’d built would actually be much better applied to analyzing long-form audio/video commentary trends, and that we could readily sell it to large funds and enterprises instead of consumers.

This was not intuitive at first. The hardest part was taking the original idea that we’d poured so much time and effort and love into and calling that baby ugly.

Then we realized there were all these other paths that had presented themselves (in our case it was the same technology, different application, different customer, different use case), but we’d ignore them because of our passion and focus for the original product.

Many of the other ideas felt like distractions. It felt unnatural to stay focused on a core mission while entertaining other outcomes. Looking back, now it is so much easier to do that, and we are better off because of it.

Better of for being pragmatic and understanding how to focus while remaining opportunistic.

What distinguishes the good founders from the great ones is being able to flip between these states without the cognitive dissonance. Being able to know when to put your nuts on the table and double down vs. when to wave the white flag in service of a better outcome.

You can call it passionate detachment — being intensely committed to solving a problem while remaining generally detached from any particularly solution.

The passion keeps you going through the tough times. The detachment keeps you clear-headed enough to change course when needed.

Sometimes, in life and in business, the best opportunities may come disguised as distractions.

The trick is knowing which is which.

—

Peace,

Ramsey