Kill the (be)cause

Most of the challenges of building a business are a direct result of ignoring the “because”.

No one is buying your product or service because you haven’t solved product/market fit

Your product keeps failing because you haven’t built it to scale.

Your team is leaving because you haven’t given them clear goals.

During the early stages of a company’s life, speed is emphasized. Run. Fast. Faster. This leads to cutting corners. You tell yourself and your team that you will come back to that later. But you never do.

These become the causes of failure and they will become ghosts in your machine if left unchecked.

When these finally show themselves, don’t ignore them, solve them. Scale-up companies don’t build scaffolding around a weak model or the wrong offering or the wrong people.

You can run for a while, you can ignore the truth for a little longer but you cannot hide from the obvious.