How To Go From Startup Dream To Reality

TL;DR

The speaker argues that founders often lie to themselves about their startup’s viability, leading to failure. He illustrates this with his own startup Posturus, which grew rapidly then flatlined, but he avoided the truth until it was too late.

Key insights

• Founders commonly ignore bad news (like the character Bruno in Encanto) to avoid confronting failure, which leads to lying to oneself and others.
• Miyamoto Musashi’s quote “Truth is not what you want it to be” underpins the need to bend to reality or live a lie.
• The speaker’s startup Posturus experienced two years of 20-30% monthly growth then went flat; he avoided the truth by cherry-picking statistics and convincing investors/employees, delaying inevitable