Do it, whatever it is, meaningfully

​De-rusting - week 5

We're officially into the 2nd half of 2024. The first 6 months did zip pass although I can still vividly remember the first 6 months of this year, suffice to say, I won't forget, ever.
One of the reasons I believe this to be is that I started writing a lot more than usual, with veiled references to all that happened.
Since I posted most of my writings on social media, I'm also getting many comments and feedback, some public and some direct messages. I'd be remiss if I didn't at least think about them.
🧢 One of the comments to a post about ideating on my startup, a friend mentioned that I should wear the 'hat' of a mentor as if I was listening to someone else. I have to admit, it's both a brilliant suggestion and yet an extremely difficult thing to do. Nonetheless, I tried and it did help a lot as it took my mind off of my startup being about the product (common problem), but rather, about how my purported users were going to perceive it. Sometimes, it does help getting perspectives from non-tech people.
👨🏻‍💻 Another comment was about posting less and working more. It did give me pause and a little bit of reflection. In the end, I decided that I'd continue writing and posting, when necessary, not because the advice was wrong but it's because those moments of reflection made me find the actual meaning of why I'm doing this. Ultimately, those that care about you will offer unbridled opinions and the least you can do is to give it a good think. So why have I decided to continue writing and posting?
1️⃣ Mostly, it's committing to those thoughts and putting it out there, with upsides of getting great feedback, and maybe a couple of chuckles, and also to share my learnings with fellow entrepreneurs.
2️⃣ At a more personal level, it's to leave my words and thoughts for my kid to read, that perhaps she'll gain some insights into her old man's mind. I wished my dad had written more but it wasn't what his generation was used to.
3️⃣ I like that social media pops up reminders of posts and allowing me to see what I posted age well, or not.
🦦For everyone else, do know that your comments and feedback are well appreciated. When you have people around you that can make you laugh, you're blessed. I know I am.
Doing a startup is a lot like being a sculptor. You first lob off big chunks to get the intended size and shape, akin to your forming the fundamental hypothesis of your idea. Then you begin the work of chipping away at the intended design of your sculpture. This is where you put together the pieces as you execute on the idea, bringing to fruition. At this stage, nothing is scalable.
Finally, the design that you have in mind reveals itself. This is when your idea is validated, with real users finding your solution extremely helpful, enough to pay for it. But it's still a rather rough and unpolished design, both the sculpture and your product.
As the sculptor starts using other tools to refine the sculpture, it's not dissimilar to you starting to hire more smart people. So now you have people who want to buy your sculpture, much like more users coming on board.
What next? Well, it's not exactly one-off, so you start looking to manufacture your sculpture, similar to how you now begin to automate and improve your product's unit economics.
You start pushing to better branded stores and malls (either you go see them or they come to you) coz why not? After all, you do have a great design to start off with. As you would be scaling to more users who now are willing to pay, some you get through marketing, but mostly, you want to acquire them organically.
Once you're here, the rest hopefully becomes history.
No wonder people say startup founders are creative people. But they don't even know half of it; like how difficult it is to sculpt.