Pivoting is an insecurity

Intentionality is the opposite of optionality. Intentionality is expressing devotion to an idea and putting on blinders to the others. Imagine deciding to go on a picnic at sunset with your housemates. That’s intentionality. You won’t FOMO at new plans because you’ve decided yours. If someone invites you to dinner, you’re busy. There’s a satisfaction in intentionality too, and by expressing it, the universe works towards your favor. If you’re shopping earlier that day, you might see a bag of chips and go “oh, this would be perfect for the picnic later” and buy it. Finding the “perfect items” is luck, but without intentionality, you won’t have anything to capitalize on the luck. The same applies to the last person you dated or your current startup idea.

Luck (and time) are the world’s most prized resource because you cant control how much of it you get, you can only control what you do with it when you get it. Imagine all the luck wasted on people afraid of intentionality.

Startup founders are choosing the career of relentlessly solving problems. You’re effectively dedicating 10 years of your life to diving into 1 problem, this is a lot like marriage. Imagine a big day that after approaching you realize was not so bad. Perhaps an exam, or any event that ended up being a non-event. Anytime you’ve heard “Don’t set the expectations too high or it won’t live up to the hype”. Ideas are hallucinations until executed upon, and they can be as big as our imagination. Unfortunately, we’ve all felt the vehicle stall when rubber meets the road. Startup founders too, when they execute upon their ideas. It might stall because users seem relatively uninterested, the product is clunky to use, the endeavor feels too hard to pull off, or the executed idea feels smaller than the hallucination. The founder has to pick optionality or intentionality. When faced with these feelings, did the founder actually care about solving the problem? Or are they externally motivated, building for other people? The problem with the latter is any bump in the road triggers an insecurity, “What will they think?”. What’s the easiest way to solve bumps in the road? Get off the road and go back to comfortable hallucinations, where anything goes, and there’s infinite optionality.

The most fulfilling thing in the world is to solve problems you infinitely care about. Bumps on the road won’t discourage you because you’re more focused on the destination than anything that could go wrong on the trip. And by doing that, you open yourself to an outsized amount of luck. We started building Brev in 2020. It never worked until late last year. There were countless opportunities to pivot, but we stayed the course. Why? Because we deeply care about the problem we’re solving, and now we have context, learnings, and a collection of luck that are putting us well on our way.

Imagine working at OpenAI for the last 8 years, before anyone gave a shit about AI and before ChatGPT had the opportunity to captivate the world. Those AI developers continued building AI models while VCs were hemorrhaging cash building last-mile grocery delivery and Ponzi schemes. If those engineers were externally motivated, they would’ve left. But they stayed because of intentionality. They care about AI more than they care that you care about AI. So they will find success.

Care about solving a problem more than how much others might care about it one day. Ironically, that might be the only way to ensure others might too.