The reward is harder work

If you think pre-PMF ain’t easy…

I got breakfast with a founder friend this week. He’s been bootstrapping for two years. As of February this year, he’d drained his retirement account, was stuck at very little revenue, and was starting to apply for jobs.

And then… he found PULL. Over the past few months, his startup has gone from near-zero to $1M run-rate revenue with a clear path to $10M+ by the end of this year.

Which is awesome! But it’s weird… he is more stressed now than he was back in January when nothing was working.

This was my story too, and it’s the story of basically everyone I’ve met who has found product-market fit: You think it will get easier once you find PMF, and it actually gets harder. This surprised me: When you’re pre-PMF, it’s hard to imagine it getting more difficult! How is this possible?

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Hitting a personal record, say, in your deadlift, is really difficult. And guess what’s your reward for hitting your PR? Heavier weight next time!

How can you possibly handle more weight? Well - the process of deadlifting 405lbs forces you to adapt so that you can deadlift 410 next week. It will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done… but you’ve done the hard work to be able to handle it.

And yet: When you hit 405, you have less reason to try for 410. You’ve hit 405, what a milestone! Or: You’ve run a sub-5-minute mile! You’ve hit $1M revenue! You’ve hit profitability! Isn’t that good enough?

My point: The reward is harder work.¹ By doing hard work, you adapt to be able to handle harder work… but you have better and better excuses to avoid doing it.²

So the ultimate constraint is in our heads: We eventually have to find a way to stop wanting it to get easier. Perhaps even finding a way to enjoy harder work!

I would love to write about how this principle applies to “the good life” beyond startups and exercise, but alas - it’s time for deadlifts. It was nice knowing you.

1. I was inspired by the quote “the reward for hard work is more work.” I can’t remember the original source, and as I search for the source, I’m realizing that many references treat this as if it is a bad thing.

2. Of course, this isn’t a reason to not get started, as the old quote goes: “we did this not because it was easy, but because we thought it was going to be easy!”