Britt Gage

Why Are We Surprised That

Startups Are So Freaking Hard?

We think they can be hacked, but the only enduring moat is effort

And maybe that’s part of the problem, trying to be legible to everyone. The tug of war of wanting to water things down for mass adoption versus building something I want for myself and trusting the others will come.

Once you choose a project, you are confined to a relatively narrow band of impact (

Figure 1

B); barring an unexpected surprise, the solution to a mediocre problem will have incremental impact, whereas solving an important problem will have greater impact. Even if you execute well, it is hard to make the solution to a middling problem interesting. In... See more

But I will say, the thing I try to ask people to do is really take some time to introspect and just ask yourself, do you actually want to be here? If you could magically wave a magic wand and you were to start a new company right now, would it be this one? If it's not, there's no indentured servitude anymore. It's okay. It's okay to move on. And... See more

We try to be as rigorous and data-driven as possible in quarterly planning. All objectives are measurable, either in terms of quantifiable thresholds or Boolean “was X completed or not.” Our objectives are very aggressive, and often at the end of the quarter we only end up completing 70% in one direction or another. The remaining 30% helps identify... See more