the slow way to start a startup 6 min read
in most startup articles and teachings,
you’ll often read that founders begin their journey by solving a personal pain.
something that bothers them so much, they decide to build a solution for it.
call me a contrarian,
but to me, that’s one of the most romanticized — and misleading — startup myths.
there are many ways to start a startup,
and not all of them require starting from zero.
scratch
building from scratch as a solo founder is often filled with burnout, and carries a far higher risk of failure, not to mention the emotional cost that comes with it.
it’s inspiring, sure.
but it’s also a myth that traps too many smart people in unnecessary struggle.
founders who “take their time” often end up with elegant plans and no progress.
why start from the bottom, when you can start from the middle?
funding first
there are actually countless founders who secured funding before they even had a product.
some were even first-time founders.
with no background, no network, and no track record at all.
and yet, they got the money first. before a line of code was written.
before any traction. before “proof.”
who are they?
1. Ben Silbermann. Pinterest.
Silbermann was a first-time founder, with no tech pedigree when he started Pinterest in 2010.
he and his cofounders raised seed money before launching the app, through clear articulation of the product vision to small angels.
2. Melanie Perkins. Canva.
Perkins was a university student in Perth when she pitched her idea for simple design tools.
she secured early funding and mentorship from Bill Tai (investor) before building Canva’s platform.
She raised based on clarity of the problem and market potential, not traction.
3. Zach Sims & Ryan Bubinski. Codecademy.
both were first-time founders who raised from Y Combinator and angels right after pitching the concept of interactive coding education.
funding came first, then product.
4. Andrew Grauer. Course Hero.
a college student with no startup record.
raised initial angel funding before product release, leveraging the academic network and a clear pain point in education.
5. Apoorva Mehta. Instacart
before launching, Mehta secured a pre-seed check from Y Combinator after pitching with just a prototype concept. no live product.
he had no prior exit or fame, but the clarity of logistics + grocery delivery problem secured him early capital.
6. Brian Armstrong. Coinbase.
first-time founder when he started Coinbase.
raised from YC before the exchange was functional. he didn’t have traction, he had conviction about crypto’s future and the right timing.
7. Whitney Wolfe Herd. Bumble.
though she had worked at Tinder, she wasn’t an established founder yet.
she secured funding from Andrey Andreev (Badoo founder) before building Bumble, based on her concept and positioning.
8. Vlad Tenev & Baiju Bhatt. Robinhood.
first-time founders, raised seed funding before launch, with a pitch deck and prototype only.
their message: “democratizing finance” — was so strong that capital flowed in pre-product.
9. Alex MacCaw. Clearbit.
first-time founder.
raised early capital pre-launch from YC, based on his API data enrichment concept. no customers yet.
10. Adora Cheung. Homejoy.
first-time founder with no previous company.
raised seed before full product build due to a clear market gap and strong team vision.
numbers
how much $ can they raised across these founders?
numbers are rounded to USD and adjusted to their value at the time of funding, not inflation-adjusted:
Low end: $250 K’ish
Median: $1 M— $2 M’ish
High end: $7 M — $10 M’ish (rare outliers like Brex and Bumble)
lesson
so, what can we leam?
- these founders secured capital first by being extremely good at “selling clarity”
- they defined the problem in vivid, undeniable terms.
- they projected competence and ownership of the solution space.
- they showed investors the inevitability of their vision, not just the potential of their product.
and of course:
momentum beats mastery, every single time.
so maybe the product and traction were never the real requirements to begin with.
as I have always said:
“having a product” is the price you pay when you can’t convince investors with your clarity.
play the game differently
people who start from the middle, play the game differently.
1. they focus on timing, not sacrifice.
while others grind for years trying to create demand,
these founders position themselves where demand is inevitable.
they don’t worship persistence; they study momentum.
because effort means nothing if you’re paddling against the current.
if you position yourself right,
you don’t need a miracle to scale,
you just need gravity to work in your favor.
timing compounds faster than effort.
2. they build on connections, not convictions alone.
most first-time founders overestimate their idea
and underestimate the value of distribution.
while others obsess over “starting small,”
these founders obsess over starting closer.
closer to capital, to markets, to trust, to opportunity.
they partner with those who already have audiences.
they co-build with those who already have reach.
they raise from those who can open doors, not just wallets.
you don’t win by proving how hard you can struggle;
you win by shortening the distance between idea and impact.
3. they reduce friction, not increase suffering.
they don’t chase “the hard way” for validation.
they chase the cleanest path to impact.
they automate what can be automated.
they delegate what doesn’t require their judgment.
they don’t measure progress by how much pain they endure,
but by how fast they leam.
they use off-the-shelf tools instead of reinventing tech stacks.
they hire fractional experts instead of burning time learning everything themselves.
they’d rather test ten ideas lightly than marry one too early.
for them, execution isn’t about suffering, nor pain tolerance;
it’s about speed of iteration, clarity, and emotional sustainability.
and a different kind of game
it’s the ability to see where energy is flowing
and placing yourself right where the current accelerates you.
they don’t fight gravity. they design around it.
and when they rise, it looks effortless,
because the hard work was never in building;
it was in choosing where to begin.
and that’s what starting from the middle really means:
- less friction, more leverage.
- less survival, more strategy.
- less noise, more signal.
bootstrap is fine, maybe
of course, not every bootstrapped startup is a mistake.
some founders do need the slow road to learn discipline, empathy, and execution.
but I bet many — if not most — founders would prefer to build a small-to-medium company right away, instead of enduring endless struggle in their bootstrap phase.
truth
the truth is:
you don’t need to start from zero to build something real.
you just need to start from clarity.
and clarity — not pain tolerance — is the real first currency every founder should secure.
so stop worshiping the “from zero” narrative.
it’s not about starting small or starting fast.
it’s all about starting smart.