I drafted a post ~6 months ago titled “Good Badvice” on applying discernment to startup advice — whether on product- or company-building. I decided against publishing at the time.
For context: I’ve consumed my fair share of startup advice from various thought leaders ranging from first-time founders and indie hackers to serial entrepreneurs and VCs. While a lot of startup advice is technically valid, it often lacks nuance. [1]
Close to a year ago, I headed to Lagos in an attempt to get users for my startup at the time. Banga was a relatively simple restaurant solution with straightforward functionality that would’ve been easy to onboard users (had I landed any). I eventually pivoted to an adjacent market, but I’m glad I didn’t spend months building in a vacuum for an unresponsive market. I.e. I ‘shipped fast’ and ‘failed quickly’.
A year later, I’m working on Gouldian which is within a different sector entirely and requires different mechanics. With this, shipping fast with the real possibility of failing quickly is likely not an option. I’ve previously written about how and why I find the MVP approach outdated, and we’ve decided to use the v1 approach with Gouldian.
The ‘ship fast’ principle which birthed the MVP may work with enterprise SaaS tools or vertical APIs but not with all markets and certainly not all kinds of users.[2] However, much of the available startup advice fails to recognise or promote such nuanced perspectives. Yet in an industry with such high risk and uncertainty, perhaps more thought leaders need to encourage patience and timely strategy rather than speed at all costs.
An analogy I’ve recently found helpful is the comparison between the Titanic and the Yamato.
The Titanic’s demise unfolded through a tragic confluence of design compromises, operational decisions and circumstance. The supposedly revolutionary vessel was, in reality, built with established techniques which neglected structural resilience. The catastrophic sinking transformed what should have been a manageable incident into an engineering failure that claimed over 1,500 lives after a single, relatively minor collision.
The Yamato, by contrast, represented an almost supernatural resilience against overwhelming force. At the time of its completion in 1941, it was the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleship ever built, with unprecedented armour protection. It was destroyed only after a massive coordinated attack specifically designed to overcome its exceptional durability. More specifically, the American force committed nearly 400 aircraft specifically to destroy this single battleship. Yet, even after absorbing 10 torpedo strikes and 6 bomb hits, the colossal battleship maintained operational capability, with functioning weapon systems and propulsion. It took an additional 5 torpedoes — deliberately concentrated on one side to cause asymmetric flooding — before the mighty vessel finally surrendered to physics rather than enemy action—capsizing only after withstanding damage sufficient to sink an entire fleet of conventional ships.
Both vessels sank for very different reasons — one due to myopia and premature launching, and the other due to extraneous circumstances despite operational fortitude.
We’re taking our time and hoping to get things right from Day 1. If things don’t work out for any reason, I’d rather it’s due to 400 aircraft and 15 torpedoes than a single iceberg.
[1] Not everyone is building the same product, in the same sector, at the same time, for the same market, and so on.
[2] No shade I promise — It’s simply not always possible to break things and get away with it.