StartUp Founders: Possible. Probable. Inevitable
Dear Reader,
You can only believe in what you don’t know. That’s why you started. Right?
Every great startup begins as an act of defiance against the existing reality.
Not always to change the world. Sometimes, just to make something a bit better.
You see a gap in the market, an edge, a better way. You imagine the future. The users, the traction, the growth, the impact. You see your life on the other side. Ugh. The seduction of possibility.
Every founder starts at zero. Just the idea, a vision and an insane will / insanity to see it through.
In possibility land everything is in play. Every door is open and every outcome is still on the table.
But we know, possible is a drug, one of the best. Your job. Your only job (aside from the other jobs!). To go from possible. To probable. To inevitable.
Possibility is Free. Probability is Earned.
Possibility is safe, its the work before go live, the dreaming, the building, the ideating, the pitch deck, all within the safe zone of not having to prove it.
No risk of being wrong….
Your job is to force probability. We know what this feels like (the dip) but you are searching for signals that something is vibing, a yes, a conversion, a dollar, a fan, a follower… Tiny f’n signals. But a signal nonetheless, a signal you can build on.
It’s not certainty, but it’s no longer just possibility. It’s evidence. And that changes everything.
It’s still fragile, unclear and probably feels like you are losing the battle. But at least you’re in the fight?
Getting Stuck
Getting stuck between possible and probable has predictable patterns, mostly just not doing enough of the hard work, but also, three cognitive traps that sometimes get in the way:
📌 The Einstellung Effect: You keep trying to prove your original idea, instead of adapting to what’s actually working.
📌 Survivorship Bias: You only see the overnight success stories, so you think you’re failing when things don’t explode instantly.
📌 Loss Aversion: You’re more afraid of proving your idea wrong than actually making it work.
The failure is not in being wrong, it’s because the possibility never started.
Possible: You have a vision, a deck, hopefully an MDP. The evidence is anecdotal at best. It’s more “People like the idea” than people throwing $$.
Probable: You have paying customers (unaffiliated). You have some form of retention. People are starting to find you (inbound). People are solving the problem with your solution.
Inevitable: The unit economics kinda work. Referrals exist. You’ve found a repeatable sales motion. Recruiting is becoming easier. Product works as advertised!
3 Stages: Possibility → Probability → Inevitable
POSSIBILITY: The Art of the Possible
Where every founder starts.
You’re selling a future that doesn’t exist yet. You’re recruiting a team on belief alone. Everything is uncertain. Investors aren’t responding. Prospects go quiet. You’re posting on LinkedIn and getting three likes.
Selling the future….
And the challenge isn’t just external (convincing investors, customers, co-founders). It’s internal.
This is where it all starts, and its brutal, lonely, and again… the dip.
Because possibility is just about getting started. This is the stage that makes you a founder, this is the hard part (for now).
PROBABILITY: A Glimmer Of Hope
📌 First paying customer.
📌 First user actually using it.
📌 First investor who wires cash.
Actually, it doesn’t even need to be any of these. It’s a moment the market gives you a real signal, something that validates what you’ve been saying all along. Not hype. Something real.
Probability starts small, maybe just a few percent. And that’s okay. It just has to be enough to know you’re on the right path…and not completely delusional.
But probability doesn’t happen by accident.
It’s execution. It’s testing, iterating, fixing. It’s listening to your customers again and again until you find what sticks. It’s knowing the fastest team to learn wins, its going back to your original assumptions and understanding what’s changed, it’s listening to the nuance of the market….
You are just trying to build a tiny bit of momentum and stay alive while doing it.
INEVITABLE Is A State Not An Outcome
When you know how to get a yes. You know that if you get someone on the phone, they’ll say yes. You know that if you do X, Y will happen. You understand the input/output dynamics of your business. You have customers. You have some revenue. But most of all, you have clear signals. You understand exactly what you need to do.
This is when you start thinking that success is inevitable, if you can just execute. Your capability to do the job is now the blocker.
Inevitable doesn’t have to mean your ARR exploded, or you own the category, but it does mean the demand is clearly coming in, its a touch overwhelming, and its all very real. You might call it PMF.
That’s when the heavy stuff starts. The real work it takes to grow into inevitable. And maintain the sanity to know inevitable is a state of momentum not a finish line.
Fab founders never stop asking what’s next, looking down the line, imagining the next SKU, the next growth lever, the next 10x feature.
Staying inevitable is just as hard, perhaps harder than getting there.
Whatever stage you’re at, the question is always the same: What’s the one action that moves you meaningfully forward?
Now go do that..
As always, if I can be of service, feel free to grab time.
LFG.
— James