Hey Reader,
Who cares. Hurry up.
That's it. That's the whole message.
As in stop doing random acts of nothingness that don’t drive the outcome.
Do the thing that matters. Do it again.
It's not about being perfect. It's about moving. And violently ignoring everything else that doesn't align with your goal for today.
Go do that.
Also, if you happen to enjoy my content, would be hugely appreciative if you could pre-order my book.
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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.
Want to get in front of 140,000+ founders at $3 CPC? Go here.
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It only took six hours to get to a version of this newsletter I liked. I realize the irony. A 700-word piece on why you shouldn’t overthink is... an example of overthinking. Original version I couldn't bring myself to delete below.
Dear Founder (again)
There’s a phrase I love to use all the time with founders who are spiraling in the nuance.
No one cares. Hurry up.
You’re early. You’re fragile. It’s hard. It’s all unknown. You’re experimenting with personas. With channels. With copy. The model is unclear. The technology is kinda there.
Cool. No one cares. Hurry up.
Customers don’t care how hard it is. They care that you can deliver and you will be in business next year.
No one is questioning your efforts. You have kids. Tired. Doing your best. All true. All valid. All real. Just not relevant.
No one cares. Hurry up. is about projecting inevitability.
As messy and iterative and wrong about so much, but you can still say. “Here’s what we’re doing. Here’s who it’s for. Here’s why it matters.”
Progress over right. (Ish. You should try to be right. Everyone would prefer if you are right. Please be right. But also, mostly, you need to move.)
The hard things are the silent ones: confusing indecision for thoughtfulness, mistaking over-iteration for strategy, convincing yourself that getting it right is what makes you a great founder.
This is the uncomfortable reality of building an internal locus of control. Or in normal words, taking full responsibility for your life and outcomes.
No one cares. Hurry up.
You might hear that and think it means rush or ship something, anything, or YOLO the launch. F' it, just spray and pray the whole list. Just do the thing. Nope. I don’t believe in random acts of work.
That’s not what it means.
No one cares, hurry up, doesn’t mean or invite you to be sloppy. It means be precise, move with intent, make the decision, run the playbook, map the opportunity, understand the goal, make the least amount of assumptions, fuzzy math the outcome and just do the thing and get on with it.
Abandoning delay on a conversation or a moment that would be better spent doing the thing, or architecting the thing, or just making some assumptions and running the thing.
If you knew the answer, it would be obvious and, shocker, you’d already know the answer. And, maybe, if it actually mattered that much, it’d be obvious in the data.
I don’t care what anyone else is doing, this is not ship the homepage, this is making sure you are not trapped in this psychologically brutal and inefficient loop that trains you to be less decisive. You’re weakening the exact muscle you need most as a founder. The ability to make calls with incomplete information.
The founders who win are the one who decide faster, ship faster, and learn faster. They have that psychopathic detachment from needing to know the answer and that narcissistic belief that they can figure it out as they go. (you read that right)
This applies everywhere.
You’re working out what variant or persona or ad funnel - Or you’re doing random acts of nothingness. You’re prepping a workflow for a process that’s never happened. You’re setting up a system you won’t need for months. You are building solutions to non-existent outcomes.
That’s what no one cares means, it’s for you, why are we talking about what happens if, when you haven’t done “happens”.
This is about just mapping your playbook, seeing the plays map out-ish, deciding a plan and working out what you don’t need to give a shit about. And not doing that.
If I can be of service, feel free to grab time.
LFG.
-- James
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