No existential thoughts until the experiment is done.
I’ve started working on a new company.
After Arctas, a mentor invited me to join him as founding engineer on a new company in the insurance space.
He previously built a multi-hundred-million-dollar ML Ops company.
In my first week, he pointed out something I had been doing for years: letting existential thoughts steer the work.
Founders fall into this constantly.
Halfway through an experiment, you start asking
“is this even the right direction?”
And the experiment dies.
You don’t get clean data.
Ideas evaporate.
You forget why you changed course.
The rule we use is simple: no existential thoughts until the experiment is over.
Each day or week, we run a test on the path to PMF.
Finish it.
Prove or disprove the hypothesis.
Only then zoom out.
When you suspend the existential spiral, you actually execute.
You get real signal instead of noise.
That’s what creates learning.
p.s. let me know what you think of these pieces. Would love to hear your thoughts.