How Founders Can Make the Grind Bearable
June 16, 2025
Startups are hard, but you don’t need to deliberately suffer to succeed.
If you’re building a company taking on a hard science problem, there is a tendency to avoid near term deadlines, as your larger milestones are too far away. This is a mistake, here’s why:
Regardless of the timeline, you still need to measure your progress and deadlines are a great way to do that. If you’re going to deliver something novel, you shouldn’t be afraid of accountability.
It’s much easier to create near term deadlines, once you have consensus on the longer term goals. When you have the long term vision agreed, you can work backwards to the present.
There is a vague belief amongst deep tech founders that setting deadlines early removes the potential for experimentation. Quite the opposite, if you set deadlines around experiments, you will likely get more done.
Best of luck out there.
