Most founders chase wealth, then power and status. Both fade. What lasts is building for yourself, a genuine curiosity you can’t ignore.

The market-first script looks clean: find demand, scale, extract value. But it breeds hollow products. Case in point: countless SaaS decks sold before code exists. They collapse when story meets reality.

The opposite is Ground Truth. Solve your own problem first. That’s what Basecamp’s founders did. They built a project tool to manage their own client chaos. They used it daily, trusted it, then released it. Integrity came before adoption.

“Collectivism and autonomy are not mutually exclusive.” - Parquet Courts, Total Football

Autonomy gives a product integrity; the collective validates and strengthens it. Both matter, but autonomy comes first.

Ground Truth rests on three pillars:

• Skin in the game: if it fails you, it fails all.

• Taste as leverage: create what you demand.

• Proof of work: test belief in practice.

Zero to one requires this. Skip it, and you’re an outsider in someone else’s pain. Raising money, outsourcing conviction, hoping scale saves you. It won’t.

The founder is always the first believer, first user, first ambassador.

Taste compounds. Community multiplies conviction, but never replaces it.

The only work that survives is the work you bleed for.