I'll fight until we sink

I was rereading Peter Thiel's "Zero to One" a few days ago. Not because I'm launching a startup — because I'm in a zero-to-one phase myself. After exiting my agency, building a personal brand and packaging what I know into a product, I'm back at the beginning. Different context, same feeling. Everything is uncertain, nothing is proven yet, and the distance between where I am and where I want to be feels enormous. I'd originally read Thiel years ago as a guide for launching internal products inside the agency — we tried comics, games, apps, pet projects to diversify revenue and keep bench developers sharp. If anything stuck from watching our startup clients and building our own attempts, it's this: the hardest part of any business isn't scaling what works. It's getting to the point where something works at all.

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That's the zero-to-one gap. And it's where most things die.

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I was sitting in my chair with the book open when I remembered a conversation from a few weeks ago. A founder who runs a micro-agency making animated training videos. Two co-founders, sharp and driven, the kind of people who make you believe they'll figure it out. But they're fighting a wave — AI tools are getting good enough that their clients are starting to say "I can probably do this myself on my couch in a couple of hours."

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Sound familiar? It should. I'm facing my own version of it. Twenty years of operational experience, and someone can now ask ChatGPT to write them a delegation framework or a role description or a management rhythm. It won't be as good — but it'll be good enough for a lot of people to convince themselves they don't need help.

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Then the founder said something that's been sitting in my head ever since.

"if we are gonna sink, im gonna put up a heck of a fight!"

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The pit nobody warns you about

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It sounded heroic. Noble. Exactly what a founder is supposed to say. And I believed him — he meant every word. But my brain went somewhere else. Because I've watched this story play out too many times.

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There's a thing called planning fallacy — everything takes longer and costs more than you expect. Always. I lived it launching products inside my agency. The first excitement is incredible. The idea is fresh, the energy is high, everything feels possible. Then reality shows up. The timeline doubles. The budget stretches. The market doesn't respond the way you imagined. And somewhere in that gap between expectation and reality, there's a pit.

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Not a setback. A pit. A motivational crater where the excitement has burned off and what's left is just the grind — with less money, less confidence, and a growing voice in your head asking whether this was a mistake.

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I've seen capable, smart founders stop right there. Not because they couldn't climb out. Because they ran out of resources while they were down. Money ran out first, which destroyed motivation, which killed belief. And the pit swallowed the whole thing. The cruelest part? Many of them could have made it. They had the skills. They had the drive. They just didn't have enough runway to survive the learning curve.

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What I keep seeing

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I know founders who lived well when the market was good. Nice offices, nice cars, the lifestyle that signals success. When the market turned — and it always turns — they had nothing underneath. No financial cushion. No reserves. No floor.

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Some went back to regular jobs. I don't judge that. It's a reasonable decision and sometimes the right one. But in private conversations, I hear the same thing over and over: "I feel like I gave up on my dream." Not because they wanted to quit. Because they couldn't afford to keep going.

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And here's what connects back to that founder with the animated videos. "I'll fight until we sink" sounds brave. But I keep asking myself: what happens after the sinking? If this specific business doesn't survive the AI wave, does he have enough left to try again? Because zero to one — that brutal, uncertain, expensive phase where nothing is proven — will be waiting for him at the start of whatever comes next. And that phase doesn't care how brave you were last time. I remember hearing Alex Hormozi say he felt truly free for the first time when he had a hundred thousand dollars in the bank. Not because of the number — because it meant three years of runway. Three years to experiment, fail, learn, try again, without the clock running out.

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That landed hard when I heard it. Because it matched everything I'd learned through my own crises. The founders who survive long-term aren't the ones who run fastest or fight hardest. They're the ones who last long enough — through the planning fallacy, through the motivation pit, through the thousand small experiments that don't work — without running out of the resources to keep going.

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The question I'd ask first

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When that founder told me he'd fight until they sink, I wanted to ask him something but held back. Not because it was rude — because I wasn't sure he was ready to hear it. The question wasn't "can you fight?" I could see he could fight. The question was: if this fight doesn't work, how many months of runway do you have before you're forced to give up on the next thing? Not this business. The next one. Because the leap of faith is real. I took mine when I left a toxic design agency to start my own thing. And I'll admit — it's easier to jump when you're young and have nothing to lose. When you've built something, when you have a family, obligations, a life that costs real money every month — jumping gets scarier. But landing gets softer, if you've built reserves.

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Either way, you'll land lower than where you were. That's the nature of starting over. The pit is coming whether you planned for it or not. The only question is whether you have enough underneath you to climb out on the other side.

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Something to sit with this weekend:

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Before asking yourself "am I ready to fight for this" — ask the quieter question: how long can I sustain this fight if it takes twice as long and costs twice as much as I expect?

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Not the heroic version. The math version.

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How many months of expenses do you have in reserve — personal and business — if revenue stopped tomorrow? Write the number down. That number is your real runway. Not your ambition, not your willpower, not your fighting spirit. Your runway. If it's short, that doesn't mean quit. It means building the floor is the most urgent thing you can do right now — more urgent than growth, more urgent than new tools, more urgent than the next product idea.

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So here's my question: when you imagine the worst-case scenario — the business doesn't work, the market shifts, the clients disappear — do you have enough left to try again? Not just emotionally. Financially. Because the dream doesn't die when you fail. It dies when you can't afford to try one more time.

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P.S. I'm back in the zero-to-one phase myself right now. Different stakes than twenty years ago — no mortgage this time, no toddler, more experience. But the pit is the same shape. The planning fallacy still bites. And the runway I built before I jumped is the only reason I can sit here writing this instead of chasing every first opportunity. That floor I keep talking about? I'm standing on it right now.