It's funny how most of my short posts come from random conversations with friends. This one's no different.
I was talking with a friend about navigating differences between founders - not the toxic kind, but the inevitable friction when you have strong-willed people with clear visions working together. You want founders with conviction, but that same conviction means they'll clash on which path to take.
His response: "You need to be able to have difficult conversations in something that's destined to fail."
Think about that. Most startups fail. That's not pessimism, it's statistics. But here you are, needing to hash out hard truths with your co-founder about something that probably won't exist in two years.
The paradox is perfect: the only way to beat those odds is to care enough to fight about the details, while knowing the whole thing might be pointless.
Maybe that's the real test. Can you have honest, uncomfortable conversations about something that's statistically doomed? If you can't do it when failure is likely, you definitely can't do it if you beat the odds and the stakes get real.