How Great Founders Actually Decide
Decision quality is the single highest-leverage skill in a startup. Here's the operating system the best founders use.
#decision-making
The two-bucket rule
- Reversible decisions , make them in hours, not weeks. Speed beats analysis.
- Irreversible decisions (hiring, firing, fundraising, pivots) , slow down, write it out, get input from 3 people who have done it before.
Run every important decision through this filter
- What outcome am I actually trying to create?
- What do I know to be true vs. what am I assuming?
- What's the cheapest test that could prove me wrong this week?
- If this fails, what does the next 30 days look like? Can the company survive it?
- Am I deciding from fear, ego, or the data?
A founder who makes 100 medium-quality decisions fast will out-execute one making 10 perfect ones slowly.