This past Friday, I posted on X: “As a founder, you can get a lot of things wrong. But if you’re unwilling to die, it will eventually work out…Be optimistic, and try to be right. But even if you’re not right, don’t die.” I expected modest engagement. Instead, it struck a nerve. Many founders reached out privately, so I feel compelled to expand on this topic.
We can get a lot of things wrong. We can misread the market, hire too fast, ship the wrong product, raise at the wrong time, or choose the wrong pricing model, positioning, or logo. We can be early, late, or misunderstood. We made all these mistakes at LinkExchange, Tellme, and Zappos, but if we are unwilling to die, we eventually figured it out. The winners are not always the smartest, the fastest, or even the most correct at the beginning. They are the ones who stay alive long enough to learn.
Of course, we should try to be right, have a strong point of view, do the work, obsess over the customer, understand our business economics, and debate our assumptions. Optimism is not blind faith. It’s the conviction that through effort, iteration, and learning, you can bend reality in your favor.
The uncomfortable truth is we will be wrong repeatedly. We just have to have the mindset that’s not failure, that’s the process. It’s easy to say this when things are going well. The real test comes during near-death experiences. That’s when you find out whether you truly believe mistakes are part of the journey or whether they feel existential.
If you work on something long enough, you will face moments that feel existential, but even iconic companies have been there. In 1997, Apple had twelve weeks of cash, and Microsoft invested $150M just to keep it afloat. Without the bridge from their archnemesis, there would be no iMac, no iPod, no iPhone. In 2000, Netflix reportedly offered to sell to Blockbuster for $50M. Blockbuster declined. In 2001, the dot-com crash cut Amazon’s stock by more than 90%. Analysts predicted bankruptcy. Survival required ruthless focus on operational efficiency and cash flow.
In 2008, Airbnb had no traction, and investors deemed the model too niche. Brian, Joe, and Nate had maxed out their credit cards, so they sold cereal boxes (“Obama O’s” and “Cap’n McCains”) during the 2008 election to raise $30,000 to survive, and manually photographed hosts’ apartments to improve listing conversion rates. In 2020, Airbnb faced a once-in-a-generation crisis and lost over 80% of its revenue. On April 5, 2020, Brian called an emergency board meeting to set principles to ensure Airbnb would be around for future generations. The principles were:
- Be decisive
- Preserve cash
- Act with all stakeholders in mind
- Emerge as role models, not villains
- Play to win the 2021 travel season
- Don’t trade in the future
These stories sound linear in hindsight: crisis → heroic decision → comeback → greatness. In reality, it feels like: chaos → confusion → doubt → painful cuts → public criticism → small wins → more doubt → slow compounding → breakthrough. Founders in the middle of their crisis don’t feel legendary. They just refuse to die.
There’s also a quieter form of death. In his final letter to shareholders, Jeff Bezos quoted Richard Dawkins: “Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at… If living things didn’t work actively to prevent it, they would eventually merge into their surroundings, and cease to exist as autonomous beings. That is what happens when they die.”
Dawkins points out that if a living organism ceases to expend energy to maintain its distinct state, it drifts toward equilibrium with its environment. Companies are no different. If we stop actively shaping who we are, the world shapes us. All of these natural forces, such as competitive pressures, best practices, quarterly expectations, and industry norms, push us toward average, and average is a slow death. Bezos’ final message to Amazonians is that differentiation is survival.
The universe wants us to be typical. It’s easier, requires less energy, and offends fewer people, but the moment we stop investing in what makes us distinctive, such as our culture, product, or customer obsession, we begin to merge with the landscape. We become indistinguishable and eventually, irrelevant.
Be distinctive and don’t die.