Midwit tendencies will destroy your ability to succeed as a founder.

The midwit is an overthinker. They stomp out the will to act with endless questions and preparations for edge cases. They’re paralyzed by uncertainty. In search of perfection, they prevent progress. Rather than ship, they debug. Rather than sell, they research.

There are two forces that impose midwitery onto the world: collective coping and fear of competition. To cope with learned helplessness and fear of change, midwits naturally form groups of haters – how dare you think different; how you dare you be ambitious? At higher levels, when you’re competing against incumbents and winning, midwit armies will form against you. This is a top down effort by powerful midwits or their puppeteers and is often too late to truly stop you.

Speed is the difference: where the midwit hits the breaks, the wizard ships and iterates. The wizard accepts uncertainty and makes bets with limited information. To the midwit, fast decisions look reckless. They miss the bigger picture. Failures are certain but the higher velocity creates more at-bats, generating the wins that make it worth it in the end.

Moving fast and taking bets with high uncertainty can feel disorienting. It can make you feel like the opposite of a wizard, a dimwit. The difference between a dimwit and a wizard is that the former lacks the vocabulary to perceive and explain their reasoning. But the outcome is the same. It is their mutual willingness to act in the absence of total certainty – to act on faith – that leads them to similar results.

It can be tempting to follow midwit tendencies. Their caution is persuasive and pessimism is convincing. This is a trap. It is a vacuum sucking the oxygen from your flame. It cannot be out-debated or negotiated with. It will sink a ship before it has set sail. The way forward is to mute the midwit and to embrace your inner wizard and dimwit.

h/t Matt Kim for being my thought partner on this.

Midwit tendencies will destroy your ability to succeed as a founder.

The midwit is an overthinker. They stomp out the will to act with endless questions and preparations for edge cases. They’re paralyzed by uncertainty. In search of perfection, they prevent progress. Rather than ship, they debug. Rather than sell, they research.

There are two forces that impose midwitery onto the world: collective coping and fear of competition. To cope with learned helplessness and fear of change, midwits naturally form groups of haters – how dare you think different; how you dare you be ambitious? At higher levels, when you’re competing against incumbents and winning, midwit armies will form against you. This is a top down effort by powerful midwits or their puppeteers and is often too late to truly stop you.

Speed is the difference: where the midwit hits the breaks, the wizard ships and iterates. The wizard accepts uncertainty and makes bets with limited information. To the midwit, fast decisions look reckless. They miss the bigger picture. Failures are certain but the higher velocity creates more at-bats, generating the wins that make it worth it in the end.

Moving fast and taking bets with high uncertainty can feel disorienting. It can make you feel like the opposite of a wizard, a dimwit. The difference between a dimwit and a wizard is that the former lacks the vocabulary to perceive and explain their reasoning. But the outcome is the same. It is their mutual willingness to act in the absence of total certainty – to act on faith – that leads them to similar results.

It can be tempting to follow midwit tendencies. Their caution is persuasive and pessimism is convincing. This is a trap. It is a vacuum sucking the oxygen from your flame. It cannot be out-debated or negotiated with. It will sink a ship before it has set sail. The way forward is to mute the midwit and to embrace your inner wizard and dimwit.

h/t Matt Kim for being my thought partner on this.