On Startups, Vision, and Learning From Missteps

The hardest part of building a company is rarely the code. It’s the choices that shape what gets built in the first place. Too often, early products become overloaded with ambition—every possible workflow mapped, every tool imagined. The result is something heavy, unsellable, or perpetually unfinished.

What works better is clarity. Someone has to stand in the role of subject-matter expert and product vision owner. That means holding the responsibility of saying what the product must accomplish and why it matters, while letting builders focus on how to deliver it. It’s not about knowing every technical detail—it’s about owning the truth of the customer’s day-to-day pain and translating it into a roadmap.

The lesson from past missteps is that scale comes later. Version one should be small, sharp, and end-to-end. A single workflow that closes the loop—solving one problem completely instead of many problems halfway. From there, expansion is natural: adjacent flows, richer integrations, and eventually the ecosystem that seemed impossible at the start.

Success paths are less about a perfect idea and more about discipline. Listen closely to customers, decide on the minimum useful product, and resist the urge to fill in every box of the whiteboard on day one. Those who do this well can still dream big, but they build in a way that actually ships.