The feeling of things moving, of progress being made, of opportunities multiplying faster than I could chase them. It felt like success. It looked like growth. And for a while, I convinced myself it was both.
But somewhere along the way, I realized I'd been confusing motion with progress.
The Seduction of Yes
Each yes feels like momentum. Like you're building something, moving forward, creating possibilities. But what I didn't see at the time was what each yes was costing me.
It wasn't just time or money, though there was plenty of both. It was focused. Clarity. The ability to see the forest for the trees, I kept planting.
The Drift
The shift happens gradually. You don't wake up one morning with a scattered product roadmap and a confused team. It creeps in, one "strategic" decision at a time.
You added that feature because a potential customer mentioned it might be useful. You take that meeting because "you never know." You explore that partnership because it could be "synergistic."
Before you know it, your original vision is buried under a pile of maybes. Your team is building things they don't quite understand for reasons that made sense three pivots ago. Your roadmap looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.
I've been there. We all have.
The Real Cost
What kills me about this pattern isn't just the wasted resources. It's the opportunity cost. While you're chasing every shiny object, your competitors are saying no to the same distractions and doubling down on what matters.
While you're spreading your energy across seventeen different initiatives, they're perfecting one thing that customers actually want.
While you're explaining to your team why this new direction makes sense, they're executing with clarity and conviction.
The momentum you thought you were building? It was actually a drift in disguise.
Learning to Say No
The hardest lesson I've learned as a founder is that strategy isn't about what you choose to do. It's about what you choose not to do.
Every opportunity, no matter how attractive, costs something. And in the early stages of a company, when resources are scarce and focus is everything, the cost is usually higher than you think.
Saying no doesn't feel like momentum. It feels like standing still while the world moves around you. It feels like missing out. It feels like the opposite of what a good founder should do.
But that's where real progress lives. Not in the motion, but in the intentional stillness. Not in the expansion, but in the constraint.
The Question
I think about this a lot these days. Not as a cautionary tale, but as a lens for decision-making. When an opportunity presents itself, I try to ask not just "Could this work?" but "What am I giving up to find out?"
Sometimes the answer is worth it. Usually, it's not.
And maybe that's the real skill we need to develop as founders: not the ability to spot opportunities, but the discipline to ignore the ones that don't fit.
What's the last thing you said yes to that you now regret? And what clarity would saying no buyback today?
The momentum you're looking for might be waiting on the other side of a well-placed no.