Persistence is not always a virtue in entrepreneurship—blindly clinging to it can lead to failure. Instead of grinding through every challenge, founders should learn to abandon misguided assumptions. Running parallel experiments can provide valuable insights and challenge what you think you know. It's crucial to adapt and pivot based on real data rather than stubbornly sticking to one approach. The key to success lies in questioning old beliefs and experimenting with new strategies to discover what truly works.
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volunteer_activism ADVICE
Persist While You Learn
Do persist through initial ignorance because learning a market takes time and early traction can be delayed.
Persist only while you run deliberate experiments to learn, not by blindly repeating failing tactics.
insights INSIGHT
Hindsight Hides Causes
You rarely know in the moment whether persistence or quitting is correct because causality is visible only in hindsight.
Many factors—market shifts, competitors, external events—make real-time diagnosis hard.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Enterprise Buyers Move Slowly
Arvid describes enterprise prospects who trial software but convert months later on their own timelines.
He uses this to show some opportunities need patience, not immediate conversion tactics.
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The entrepreneurial world loves telling founders to "never give up"—but what if that advice is slowly killing your business? In this episode, I unpack why persistence without direction is just expensive stubbornness. The real skill isn't grinding through everything; it's knowing which assumptions to abandon while keeping the business alive. I share why running parallel experiments beats blind faith, and what a Twitter thread about Pieter Levels' "ugly" landing pages taught me about the beliefs we cling to without questioning.
This episode of The Bootstraped Founder is sponsored by Paddle.com
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The Bootstrapped Founder