Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Key Takeaways Speed without restraint doesn’t create momentum — it quietly builds fragility.
Products win by being trusted daily, not applauded briefly.
Founders naturally worship speed. Move fast. Ship more. Keep the roadmap full so everyone knows you’re “building.”
I bought into that, too, until I watched “fast” turn into fragile.
Most startups don’t die because they moved too slowly. They die because they tried to do too much too soon. They stack ideas faster than they can validate them, and they wake up one day with a product that is harder to use, harder to explain and impossible to love.
I learned this while building a consumer tech business in smart glasses, a trend-heavy space where hype is constant and big platforms have the loudest megaphones. In categories like this, there’s always a new “must-have” feature and a new voice insisting you’ll be irrelevant without it. While yes, the pressure is real, so is the trap.
What saved us was a shift in habit. We started saying no more than we said yes. Not because we lacked ambition, but because we wanted adoption, not applause, and a business that could survive the cycle of trends.
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Build for utility, not applause
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