Most founders think startups are about execution, hustle, or even luck. They’re not. They’re about how you think . A growing body of academic research argues that the best founders don’t just build companies, they behave like scientists . One of the strongest recent contributions is: Felin, T., Gambardella, A., Novelli, E., & Zenger, T. (2024). A Scientific Method for Startups . Journal of Management. The Problem: Startups Are Built on Weak Thinking Most startups fail before

Most startups do not fail because the spreadsheet was wrong. They fail because the fundamentals were weak from the start. As Harvard professor William Sahlman argued, business plans are often acts of imagination rather than accurate predictors of success. Early-stage ventures face too many unknowns for detailed long-term forecasts to be reliable. What matters more is whether the startup is strong across the factors that actually drive venture outcomes. Sahlman’s framework hig

Most founders prepare for fundraising using the wrong playbook. Investors don’t evaluate startups like banks. They don’t rely on spreadsheets. They don’t trust projections. They think differently. 1. They Bet on People, Not Slides The founding team is the single most important factor. Before your product, before your numbers, investors are evaluating you. 2. They Look for Outliers, Not Averages Most startups fail. A few generate 100x returns. Investors are not optimizing for

Most founders misunderstand MVP. They think it means “build a smaller version of the product.” So they spend months designing features, polishing UX, and writing code. Then they launch. And nothing happens. The problem is not execution.The problem is misunderstanding what MVP actually is . MVP Was Never About the Product Over time, MVP has been defined in many ways. Some call it a “minimal product.” Others describe it as a version built for early adopters. Some see it as a pr