Founders are taught to possess enough faith to will whatever they’re working on into existence but are rarely reminded to worship anything but themself. This creates a pressure cooker of responsibility that distorts reality to the point that they often find it hard not to confuse themselves for God — and we all know how that ends.

Molly Mielke • morals

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For the past decade, our idolatry of startups and innovation has meant the focus has been: What can we disrupt? How fast can we grow? How big can we get? How much can we raise?

Founders are taught to possess enough faith that they can build something very big very fast. This creates a pressure cooker of responsibility that distorts reality to the p... See more

sublimeinternet.substack.com • Can I Ramble for a Sec?

Being a founder requires constant calibration between arrogance and humility, optimism and pessimism. You need the arrogance to believe that you have something important to say, but the humility to know most people won’t care. You need the optimism to convince yourself and others (employees, investors, customers) to believe in you. But you need pes... See more

sari azout • Things I'm Thinking About

Start-ups of any kind are awash in ambiguity. It’s the founder’s responsibility to hold that ambiguity for everyone, which is often a lonely job.

Graham Duncan • Letter to a Friend Who May Start a New Investment Platform - Graham Duncan Blog

Sometimes the prize feels closer, other times farther away. Still other times it feels like we are drowning in aimlessness and exasperation. An identity crisis looms for any high achiever flirting with failure, and a calculation begins on the conflicting forces of sunk costs and lost time on the one hand, and reputational harm on the other. As entr... See more

I’ve always believed the best early-stage founders are artists – they're obsessive about new and unusual things, they feel compelled to bring creation into the world, and they are often misunderstood for long periods of time–even lifetimes. Building businesses is their art.

Some founders are not only the first-and-best sales-person, but also natural evangelists. More, they’re on a mission to educate the world about their passion. They don’t see a lack of interest as a barrier, but as an opportunity to change minds. That is a difficult, expensive, and slow path7, but it is a path, and one that could result in zealous,

longform.asmartbear.com • A Smart Bear » Excuse me, is there a problem?

Comms teams are important and necessary, but not sufficient. Mission-driven startups need founder-led comms. Only a founder can be the chief evangelist for their company. By assuming that responsibility and using that power, you can change narratives, change minds, and change the course of history.

Pirate Wires • Inside Anduril’s Comms Strategy: 10 Rules for Mission-Driven Founders

We all know “startups are hard,” but I think we tend to imagine that this difficulty is bounded, contained, modelable, a bit like running a marathon: yes, legs and lungs hurt, but that’s normal and appropriate, and we know the route, the distance, and that there’s a finish line. This is a kind of difficulty we can contend with without losing oursel... See more

sublimeinternet.substack.com • Can I Ramble for a Sec?

sari azout • Things I'm Thinking About

Graham Duncan • Letter to a Friend Who May Start a New Investment Platform - Graham Duncan Blog

longform.asmartbear.com • A Smart Bear » Excuse me, is there a problem?

Pirate Wires • Inside Anduril’s Comms Strategy: 10 Rules for Mission-Driven Founders

Chris Best • Principles and pragmatism