I remember one night, around 2 AM, staring at a spreadsheet. We were running out of money at RemoteTeam. Fast. Every cell was a tiny red dagger in my heart. I was tweaking the numbers, trying to make them look better, as if changing the font color from red to black would magically make payroll. I felt completely and utterly powerless. The market, our competitors, our burn rate… it all felt like a giant wave about to crash over me. I was trying to control the ocean. It was a stupid, and very lonely, feeling.
We talk a lot in Silicon Valley about changing the world. About disrupting industries. About 10x growth. But we don’t talk enough about the internal chaos that comes with the external ambition. We, as founders, are wired to take on the impossible. But that wiring can get us into a lot of trouble. We start to believe we can control everything. And when we inevitably can’t, we feel like failures. The truth is, the most successful founders I know, the ones who have been in the game for a long time, are not the ones who can control everything. They are the ones who have mastered the art of focusing on the very, very few things they can actually control.
This isn’t a sexy topic. It’s not about raising a massive seed round or getting a million users in a week. It’s about the quiet, internal work that no one sees. It’s about looking at the mountain of things you could do, and picking the one or two things you can do. Right now. Today. And then doing them. That’s it. That’s the secret. It’s not about having all the answers. It’s about knowing which questions to ignore.
The Grand Illusion: Why We Chase the Uncontrollable
Look, I get it. The whole reason we became founders is because we have a healthy dose of delusion. You have to. You have to believe you can build something out of nothing, that you can see a future no one else does. That same belief system, however, makes us susceptible to what I call the “grand illusion of control.” We think that because we can control the product roadmap, we can also control the market’s reaction to it. We think that because we can hire a team, we can control their every thought and action. It’s a trap. And I fell into it more times than I can count.
At MovieLaLa, my first company, I was obsessed with our competitors. I had alerts set up for every time they were mentioned in the press. I’d spend hours reading their blog posts, trying to reverse-engineer their strategy. I was convinced that if I just knew what they were doing, I could outsmart them. But here’s the thing: I couldn’t control what they did. I couldn’t control what the press wrote about them. I couldn’t control their funding. All that time and energy I spent worrying about them was time and energy I wasn’t spending on the one thing I could control: our own product and our own users. It was a painful lesson. It took me years to understand that the competition is a distraction. The real game is played inside your own company.
Another area where founders get lost is trying to control investor perception. I’ve seen founders spend months crafting the perfect pitch deck, agonizing over every word and every slide. They practice their pitch a hundred times. They try to anticipate every possible question. And then they walk into the meeting, and the investor is in a bad mood because they had a fight with their spouse that morning. Or they just funded a similar company and aren’t looking for another one. You can’t control that. You can’t control the whims of a VC. What you can control is your business. You can control your metrics. You can control your story. You can walk into that meeting with a business that is so compelling, so undeniable, that the investor’s mood doesn’t matter. That’s the only way to win.
The Short, Unsexy List of What You Can Actually Control
So if you can’t control the market, the competition, or the investors, what’s left? It’s a surprisingly short list. And it’s not very glamorous. But mastering this short list is the difference between burning out and building a legacy.
1. Your Effort: You can’t control the outcome, but you can control the input. You can control how many sales calls you make. You can control how many lines of code you write. You can control how many times you iterate on the product. I’m not saying you should work 100-hour weeks. That’s a recipe for burnout. I’m saying that you should be intentional about where you put your energy. Are you spending your time on the things that actually move the needle, or are you just busy being busy? I’ve been guilty of the latter. It feels productive, but it’s not. It’s just a way to avoid the hard work of focusing on what matters.
2. Your Attitude: This sounds like something you’d see on a motivational poster, but it’s true. You can’t control the setbacks. You can’t control the failures. But you can control how you react to them. Do you see a setback as a learning opportunity or as a sign that you should give up? Do you see a failure as a personal indictment or as a data point? I’ve had days where I wanted to curl up in a ball and never look at a computer again. But I learned that allowing myself to feel that for a little while, and then choosing to get back up, was a muscle I could train. It’s a choice. And it’s one of the few choices you have.
3. Who You Surround Yourself With: You can’t control the people you hire, not really. You can’t control their motivations or their personal lives. But you can control who you choose to bring into your inner circle. You can choose to surround yourself with people who lift you up, who challenge you, who believe in you even when you don’t believe in yourself. This goes for your team, your investors, your advisors, and your friends. I’ve made the mistake of keeping people around for too long because I was afraid of having a difficult conversation. It was a huge mistake. The wrong people will drain your energy and your morale faster than anything else. The right people will give you the strength to keep going when you want to quit. For more on this, I wrote about it in my post on founder relationships.
4. Your Physical and Mental Health: This is the one that most founders ignore. We treat our bodies and our minds like they are machines that can run on fumes. They can’t. I learned this the hard way. I burned out. Twice. It was only when I started to prioritize my health – getting enough sleep, eating real food, exercising, and talking to a therapist – that I was able to perform at my best. You can’t control the stress of being a founder. But you can control how you manage it. You can control whether you let it consume you or whether you build the resilience to handle it. I also wrote about this in my post on founder loneliness.
The One-Thing-at-a-Time Project
I know this all sounds simple. Almost too simple. But in the chaos of building a company, simple is a superpower. When you feel that wave of overwhelm coming, when you're staring at that spreadsheet at 2 AM, I want you to do one thing. Stop trying to control the ocean. Instead, pick one thing. Just one. The one thing you can control. Maybe it's making one more sales call. Maybe it's fixing one bug. Maybe it's just going for a walk and clearing your head. Do that one thing. And then, when you're done, pick the next one. That's how you build a company. Not by controlling everything, but by focusing on the one thing in front of you. One at a time. It’s not glamorous. It’s not a hack. But it’s the only thing that works.
Frequently Asked Questions
What experience informs this perspective?
This perspective comes from over a decade of building companies in Silicon Valley, two successful exits (RemoteTeam to Gusto, MovieLaLa to Gfycat), and investing in 200+ startups including Anthropic, OpenAI, and Scale AI. I write about what I've lived.
How has this view evolved over time?
My thinking on most topics has changed significantly over the years. Early in my career, I held many conventional views that experience proved wrong. I try to update my beliefs when the evidence changes.
How can I apply this thinking to my own situation?
Start by identifying the core principle behind the opinion, not the specific example. Then ask yourself: does this principle apply to my context? If yes, test it in a small, low-risk way before going all in.
What's the most common pushback you get on this?
People often push back by citing exceptions or edge cases. And they're usually right that exceptions exist. But building a strategy around exceptions rather than patterns is a losing game for most founders.