How to Avoid the Startup Death Traps
Starting a company shows you quickly that progress isn’t the same as success. Initially, I believed that hiring more people and refining details would lead to growth. Big numbers seemed like proof of success. Over time, I realized that most founders don’t fail due to bad ideas. They fail because of the traps they create for themselves.
Before diving into today’s topic, I just want to say thank you to everyone who joined us last Wednesday for Founder Mode Live with Max Mullen (Instacart) & Andrew Ofstad (Airtable) during SF Tech Week. And a huge shoutout to our Founder Mode team for crushing it from prep to wrap. Hands down! The best event I’ve been part of yet. The co-work studio was absolutely buzzing.
Going back, the truth is growth can be deceiving. You can look busy, sound impressive, and still be digging your own hole. Real growth happens with clarity. Focus on what’s important and cut away the rest. These lessons come from tough experiences. They’re worth sharing. They can save months of frustration, or even help the whole company.
Here’s what I’ve learned.
1. Over-Hiring Is a Silent Killer
The fastest way to sink a startup is to overhire. It feels like progress. You have a growing team, new Slack channels, and even a few extra Zoom meetings. It all shows you’re scaling. But the truth is, each new full-time employee adds weight: salaries, taxes, HR, benefits, and endless admin.
Once you overextend, it’s a nightmare to unwind. I've watched teams grow big, then find out six months later that many roles weren't needed. It’s painful, expensive, and distracting.
I’ve learned to stay lean as long as possible. Contractors and specialists offer flexibility. You won’t be locked into long-term commitments. Hire slowly, test fit, and wait until the pain of not hiring is bigger than the cost of doing it.
Lean teams move faster, and in a startup, speed beats size.
2. Done Is Better Than Perfect
Perfectionism feels noble, but it’s just disguised fear. You keep polishing because you’re afraid the product isn’t ready, or that people won’t like it. But every week you delay, you’re missing out on real feedback that could make it better.
Shipping a "brilliant" product six months late is worse than sending an MVP now. The market rewards speed, not polish. Each delay moves you further away from knowing what customers truly want.
I’ve learned that launching fast and learning in public is always the better play. Your product's first version doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to spark a conversation. The sooner you ship, the sooner you learn, and the sooner you win.
3. Incentives Are Everything
Nothing kills momentum faster than misaligned incentives. It’s easy to assume people will care as much as you do, but they won’t, unless their success is tied to yours.
If someone’s motivation is transactional, their loyalty will be too. Flat-fee partners, short-term deals, and one-time promotions really catch the eye. But they seldom create lasting traction. I’ve seen this play out in marketing, partnerships, and hiring.
The fix is simple: create real alignment. Give people skin in the game. Shared wins, like revenue shares or equity, build strong commitment. When there's a clear performance-based benefit, it fosters even more dedication. When people gain from your success, they don’t just promote you. They also believe in what you’re creating.
Authenticity scales. Transactions don’t.
4. Vanity Metrics Lie
We’ve all done it, celebrating flashy numbers that look good on slides but don’t mean much. Traffic spikes, social followers, or a large list of “users” seem great. But they often don’t lead to conversions.
If 12,000 people use your product but none of them pay, you don’t have a business; you have a distraction.
I’ve learned to focus on metrics that reflect value exchange. Revenue, retention, and conversion are the key signals that count. Everything else is noise.
The problem with vanity metrics is that they feed your ego, not your business. When you focus on what actually moves the needle, your priorities shift. Suddenly, it’s not about how many people see what you do, it’s about how many people pay, stay, and tell others.
5. Founders Are Often the Bottleneck
This may be tough for many founders: we can be our own biggest hurdle.
We love the feeling of being busy. It feels like progress. Putting meetings and tasks on your calendar that others can do for $20 an hour isn’t real leadership. It’s avoidance.
Delegation isn’t weakness; it’s leverage. Every hour spent on low-value tasks is an hour lost for strategy, product, or growth.
I’ve had to learn to step back. To ask: Is this the best use of my time? Usually, the answer is no.
The founder’s job isn’t to do everything; it’s to build the system that does.
5 Key Takeaways
- Stay lean. Over-hiring feels like growth, but it kills flexibility.
- Ship fast. Perfection is the enemy of progress.
- Align incentives. Shared success drives long-term loyalty.
- Measure what matters. Real metrics = revenue, retention, and results.
- Delegate to think. Free time creates space for clarity and direction.
Final Thoughts
The more I build, the more I see that startups don’t fail from one big mistake. They fail from a thousand small ones that add up. Many get led astray by the wrong signals: the big team, the shiny product, the vanity metric.
Real founders learn to simplify. They cut what’s unnecessary, focus on what’s real, and protect their time like it’s gold.
Building isn’t about adding more, it’s about removing what doesn’t serve the mission. The best companies don’t grow because they do more; they grow because they do less, better.
Sometimes, the smartest move isn’t the next big feature, hire, or campaign. It’s the quiet decision to stay lean, move fast, and think clearly.
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See you next week,
-kevin
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