I used to read the tech headlines and feel a pit in my stomach.
I saw the funding announcements. The glowing profiles. The stories of founders who seemed to discover a magical secret and become an "overnight" success.
And I would look at my own work—the slow, messy, frustrating process of building something from nothing—and wonder, "What am I doing wrong?"
It took me a long time to learn a fundamental truth of every great endeavor: The harvest gets the headlines, but the real work happens in the soil. Alone. In the dark.
If you are building, talking to prospects, getting rejected and experimenting to find that golden ratio of product-market fit, I need you to hear me:
This period of quiet isn’t a sign of failure.
It is the season of planting.
This season is your single greatest competitive advantage, and most founders waste it by wishing it was over. The company in the spotlight is performing. You are learning. The company with the massive funding round has to spend its time managing expectations. You get to spend your time managing your product.
In the quiet, you are given three freedoms you will never have again:
The freedom to be wrong. When no one is watching, you can launch a feature that completely flops. You can test a wild marketing idea that goes nowhere. These aren't failures; they are inexpensive lessons. Failure in the spotlight is a crisis. Failure in the dark is called research.
The freedom to be slow. You have the incredible gift of time. You can afford to have a long, unscalable conversation with your first ten customers. You can afford to throw away three months of code because you learned something that changes everything. You are not on anyone else's clock.
The freedom to be honest. You don’t have to pretend you have all the answers. You can be vulnerable with your team and your first users. You can say, "We're not sure if this is the right way. What do you think?" That honesty forges a bond of trust that a slick, polished company can only dream of.
A skyscraper can be built in a year and celebrated with fireworks. An oak tree grows for decades, mostly in silence. It puts down deep roots before it ever reaches for the sky.
Don't be discouraged by the silence. That's where the roots are growing. Trust the process. Trust the soil. The harvest will come.