Don't Do It!

A few weeks I was having lunch with a founder I've known for many years. He remarked how curious it is that everyone wants to be a founder in 2025. “Founder" is now a job title on LinkedIn - Just simply saying it out loud seems to be its own form of self referential credential. 

While I was sitting with that thought, I randomly saw this interview with Scottie Scheffler about winning. I’m not much of a golfer, but the tl;dr is “what's the point?” In his words, "you work for a lifetime, and then you celebrate for two minutes."

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‍Why not to do a startup 

There have been countless words dedicated to why one should start a startup since Paul Graham penned "How to start a startup" 20 years ago. Far fewer on why you shouldn't. I believe becoming a founder and starting a new project should be a last resort.

While there have been a number of recent examples of insanely fast growing startups from the very beginning like Cursor or Lovable or Clay, many of these are actually myths. Clay for example worked tirelessly for 7 years before they saw product-market fit. The average VC backed exit takes 8-10 years at least. Are you willing to spend the next decade of your life working on this project and problem? Are you willing to spend years working on it when no one cares about it, including your friends, family, customers, and investors?

Are you excited about managing teams through this wilderness? When your best people leave you, and you need to rebuild?

Would you like to think about this problem 24/7, lose sleep over it, potentially lose friends and life outside work, and at worst even partners and family?

Are you willing to pay yourself less than market for the next decade?

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So what's the point?

The point is to work on something you find meaningful, to help build something that moves us further into the future. Is someone already building that thing you're obsessed with? Go help them do it. They almost certainly need your help.

But what if the thing you're obsessed with doesn't exist? Doesn't exist doesn't mean marginally better - If you think you can help make the existing thing better, go help them do that. If the thing you're obsessed with does not exist at all, then you should go create it. 

Over the years many close friends have asked me about starting a company. Because I care about them deeply, my first advice is not to do it. But if it truly doesn't exist, and they're already obsessed, spending all of their time thinking about it and working on it nights and weekends regardless, then my advice is a little different: "Don't do it...unless you have to."