Hey Reader,
The very first thing every founder says before the product exists, a single customer or dollar shows up, before any proof of any kind is some version of:
I can do this.
It's rarely evidence led, something inside you decides it's worth believing. It's not fraud. It's not delusion. It's simply the starting point. And this is really important.
Founding rarely begins with real data. It begins with a belief you have no business holding yet and then spending years trying to earn it - doing the work so reality catches up.
Just to start with the end.. The key is to make sure the belief that got you to take that step, to enter the arena, isn't the same belief that eventually stalls your growth. (A continuation of AIB - Am I Better)
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Starting A Startup: Build Something People Want
Every founder starts at zero. No one starts with a product, customers, revenue, or a real clue how it will all play out.
Failure is the result of not doing everything in your power to turn your nothing into something. It's that simple.
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If you tell me you're going to run a marathon the day before you start training, it's reasonable for me to believe you understand the concept of running, the mechanics of what you will need to do, have an idea of what the finish line looks like, and presumably know your legs work. There's some basis for your confidence and your statement. It's not irrational. Thousands of others do it and it's a reasonable assumption that if you chose to, you could do it too.
But if you tell me you're going to start a startup - well that's just crazy.. You've never done it, the odds are awful, you haven't really dug into the viability, you don't know what it will take, and there are more unknowns than knowns. You're announcing you are climbing Everest and will navigate it on the fly, using skills you don't yet have.
Is it possible you'll figure it out? Yes, absolutely, we are banking on it.
Is it irrational the moment you say it? Also yes!
It's required. If you only acted on beliefs supported by evidence, you'd never start and nothing would ever really get created, it takes some order of delusion for us all to move forward. This first belief is what gets you into the arena and starts the journey.
The important part is whether you're kinda aware of the craziness of it all.
This belief in yourself takes a number of forms. Some push you forward, some keep you afloat, some blind you, some slowly kill the company. The job isn't to believe less, it's to understand what type of belief you're operating on.
This might be the taxonomy we can apply to early founder belief...
Required Beliefs: (I can do this) This is the spark. Without it, nothing starts. You need it, even though it's unearned, it's what starts the journey.
Fuel Beliefs: (The market is moving in our favor / This deal is happening / We're close.) These are the stories you conjure up to get through brutal weeks. They matter, they keep your energy, but they must not be confused with analysis or truth.
Hustle Beliefs: (We're in conversations with a few other investors / Inbound interest is strong / We expect this logo to close.) These are the beliefs you present externally to create opportunity, to open doors and every founder operates here at some point. No secret, the boundary between healthy hustle and the line one must not cross is thinner and blurrier than we would like to admit.
Fatal Beliefs: (It's just a long sales cycle / This hire needs more time / These metrics don't apply to us because we're pre-PMF / We're creating a new vertical) These feel comforting, protect you from action, and almost always let the core decay in some manner while you maintain optimism.
Fraud: The tech works. Revenue that doesn't exist. Traction that didn't happen. Deals you lost that you keep in the CRM. Actions here hurt others for your gain. You know the line. Don't cross it.
Your job is to know which belief category you're living in.
Which kinda leads to manifesting... When you repeat something enough times, you start treating it like memory, turns into something that feels true. We are going to win this deal said enough times can become genuine confidence, and that confidence makes a difference in how you hire, pitch, negotiate, lead - all of it. That's the epic side of belief, the one that shapes your behavior in ways that change outcomes.
But... The same mechanism works in the other direction. If you repeat the "we have to educate customers on our product as it's a new vertical which costs more money and takes more time" enough times and if you let that become your reality. You stop questioning it and you stop seeing signals.
WHICH LEADS to the entire point of this newsletter... The Self Fulfilling Prophecy!
This crazy place where you get a little traction, a few customers, a little revenue, maybe some investment, some real signals you have a real thing - and this is where most founders get trapped.
The belief that got you here - that pure hustle vision "I can do it" becomes the belief that holds you back. Not because it was wrong, we know that, it's the ticket to get in the arena. Because you didn't update it, it's a founder pattern that might as well be a law of physics.
If you survive the 0 → 1 stage, you inevitably start believing your own narrative, and rightly so. You did something improbable, against all odds, you did it, you got us to milestone one. And with that you internalize the idea that you are uniquely capable of doing things no one else can do. Urgh.
This is where founders hit the "no one can do this better than me" stage of which MOST is true. No one will care as much, no one will pay as much attention, no one will see into the customer the way you can, no one has better product vision, no one has more urgency - those founder instincts are not the ones I mean.
It's the one where you don't hand off responsibility. You don't let people rise. You don't give them ownership. You stay involved in everything because your early success convinced you that this is the cost of winning. It all HAS to be built on your back and your back only.
That becomes the ceiling.
The company grows to the exact edge of your personal capability and then stops. It cannot scale past you because you won't let it and you are likely the only one who knows this.
From the outside, it looks like a market issue or bad timing or shitty hires or difficult customers, but internally, including to your employees it's a clear failure to evolve past the founding version of yourself.
I can do this was the right belief at 0 → 1.
I'm the only one who can do this is the belief that kills you at 1 → 10.
If you're wondering if this is you, here's what it looks like:
You're the only one talking at all-hands.
Your calendar is relentless.
You have zero time to think, jumping from fire to fire with no clear strategy.
You can't hire people better than you (or you hire them and micromanage them into mediocrity).
You redo work your team already did because it's not "right."
Your team asks for your approval on everything.
You throw feature grenades to your engineers with no context.
...and nothing seems to be getting easier. Same shit, different day. BUT you are in revenue, with happy customers, and people like the thing you built....
So, you don't get to run a company without belief and you don't get to remove irrationality from the early stages. But you do get to decide which beliefs move you forward and which beliefs you can leave behind.
The market doesn't care what you believe. It only cares what became true.
If I can be of service, feel free to grab time.
LFG.
- James
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