Hey Reader,
The wannabe founders can talk about their idea, the market, the problem statement, all 11 slides on the YC deck template and sound fab.
Good founders can go deeper. The players, the mechanics, the moving parts. The network, the sales plays, the - wow this founder really knows their shit kinda founder.
Great founders? They know it all. They've lived in the problem so long (enough), gone so deep (enough), it's part of their DNA. They know shit that we don't even think to ask. They've obsessed, it shows. And it's insane when you see it.
To the wrong customers, employees, VCs or partners, that kind of depth looks like “too much” - When you get the feedback that you're too excited. Too detailed. Too passionate. Too intense. You need to calm it down. Ignore them.
To the right people, it’s the most honest signal that you’re looking at someone who knows the problem so intimately, so thoroughly, that it’s impossible to walk away.
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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.
Everyone has a dream, a vision, and some level of arrogance that they can actually make this thing happen.
Failure is the result of not doing everything in your power to turn your nothing into something. It's that simple.
Want to get in front of 140,000+ founders at $3 CPC? Go here.
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This isn't about being an industry/solution expert, this is about PROBLEM expert. It's why founders succeed in spaces they "don't belong in." New perspective, no bias, and know the problem so well, they solve it however they want. So before you give me the AirBnB founders didn't have hotel experience, correct, they had deep problem experience....
Don’t confuse depth with completeness.
You don’t need everything figured out. You need clarity that you will.
Don’t confuse depth with time.
You don’t need 10 years in the problem. You need however long it takes to get it.
Don't confuse solution depth with problem depth.
Incredible minds not getting funded or closing customers is because part of depth is customer understanding, the deep, uncomfortable, in the arena loop, the depth that lets you see the signals, and truly understand the pain.
Depth is about clarity, speed, obsession, and the ability to keep asking better questions until the right answer becomes inevitable.
That’s why PhDs who invent something don’t always get funded and why founders who didn’t invent anything often do. Because being first to insight often beats being first to idea.
This "great" founder usually isn’t that fab at commercialization, or hiring, or culture, or delegating, or literally a billion other things one assumes they need to succeed.
... and a founder with only depth and no peripheral vision is a liability, perfecting a product no one wants, or unable to see the real market opportunity, and unable to capitalize on their depth. It's why the hacker / hustler combo is loved.
But early on, it can be ish ignored. You can ish buy those competencies. What you can’t buy is someone who knows the problem so deeply and with sufficient passion to solve, to think, to understand.
Maybe this converts to a bottleneck at Series A. But not today.
Marc Andreessen calls it the homicide detective test.
The detective interviewing a suspect who thinks they have their alibi ready to go.
Where were you? The movies. Cool. With who? Easy. What movie? Easy. Which theater? Upstairs or downstairs? Which snacks? How did you pay? Where did you park? ..and then... What trailer played right before the movie started?
The questions keep going more detailed, more granular until the story breaks. That’s how most founders break too.
They sound great at 30,000 feet. But start drilling into customers, margins, GTM, product edge, competitive gaps and it fuzzes into surface level bullshit. Not lack of intent, or want, or even intelligence, just lack of true domain authority.
And it gets worse. It’s the moment you realize you don't actually know your own business. That’s devastating.
Depth not only earns trust - and that in itself is massive - it also gives YOU trust in your own decisions.
The founders who understand the problem, not only don’t break, they get sharper, more specific. As you press harder, they lean in. Because they are not recalling a pitch, it's reciting what they know (believe) to be true.
This playbook is often aligned to founders talking to investors, but the same thing applies to everyone you need to convince. Customers. Partners. Employees. Co-founders. All trying to decide the level of real.
In most cases no one is doubting the commitment, we are questioning the capability. The customer who joins you early despite your half-baked, kinda-working product doesn’t do it because of your roadmap. They do it because you sound like someone who is definitely going to figure it out.
That’s what depth does and it's the core of founder-led sales. When you know the problem better than your customers do, people follow, they are buying access to you even if what you’re building isn’t "ready?!".
Andreessen says the best founders are almost annoyed “I can’t believe you’re asking me questions this detailed.” But they still answer, because you cannot ask them the tough questions, because you don't have the depth, because they’ve already asked themselves harder versions to themselves, when no one was watching, because they wanted to.
VC Jessica Lin put it nicely. The best entrepreneurs give the impression “this person has thought about this problem more than anyone else.” In her fund’s recent experience, the founders they chose to back had spoken with 50+ prospective customers before pitching. They even shared their detailed interview notes during diligence. What?!
Second-time founders, who had success on their first startup but then bombed the second, it’s usually because they liked the idea, they saw the market, but they didn’t have the depth. And without that depth, they made mistakes (and burned cash without clarity of direction) they never would’ve made the first time. They skipped the hard work.
You win for being undeniable. For having solved the idea maze.. when you have already explored all the twists, turns, pivots, back up plans, how it fails.... When you have over cycled on all the playbooks, hit all the dead ends, you have completed the maze in your head.
It does not mean you are right, it does not mean it's a guarantee. It means you have absolute clarity, absolute depth, and a very reasonable and articulable reasoning behind the thinking for your journey that is tough to refute....
So maybe. You don't know your startup as well as you think you do. Just maybe this is a choice, for you, to get back in the arena.
If I can be of service, feel free to grab time.
LFG.
-- James
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