The Founder's Algorithm: 7 Rules I Wish I Learned Sooner
From costly mistakes to proven strategies: A founder shares 7 fundamental rules for building successful startups, distilled from 5+ years of hands-on experience
Running a startup is hard. Running a startup as a young, first-time founder? Even harder. When I started this journey, I had nothing going for me except blind optimism and a vision I couldn't shake. No experience, no network—just a stubborn belief that I could figure it out.
The reality check hit fast. Imposter syndrome kicked in, and I found myself obsessively studying how other startups operated. I tried everything—frameworks, best practices, growth hacks—some worked, most didn’t. Over time, through endless experiments, failures, and course corrections, I learned to separate the noise from real operational tactics.
This manuscript is my way of giving back to the same open-source knowledge that helped me survive. If you’re a first-time founder navigating the chaos, I hope these insights help you build better frameworks and avoid some of the mistakes I made.
Here is my encoded Founder’s Algorithm – rules I wish I learned sooner, drawn from real lessons and battle-tested experiences:
Rule 1: Speed of execution matters more than the decision itself
Greater value lies on iterative learning and improvements rather than perfect decisions by a “genius” founding team
Most founders waste too much time deciding and too little time executing. They debate ideas endlessly, trying to make the "perfect" call—when in reality, most decisions don’t need to be perfect, just directional.
Execution creates momentum, learning, and insight—things that no amount of debating will ever replace. A fast-moving, iterative team beats a slow but “thoughtful” team every time. Here’s my framework for speed:
Plan Fast, But Not Blindly. Speed doesn’t mean recklessness. Have a one-page system that outlines what needs to be done. If a debate arises, let the person executing decide. Over-analysis is a tax on speed.
The 2-Week Rule. If an idea can’t be tested within two weeks, it’s probably too big. Most things—whether a product update, a sales experiment, or even hiring—should fit into a two-week execution cycle. Unless you’re building rockets, momentum > perfection.
Prioritise Ruthlessly. Since two weeks isn’t long, focus on high-leverage actions that drive measurable results. Be audacious but realistic in setting goals for the sprint. Small wins compound.
Iterate Relentlessly. After every sprint, review, adjust, and repeat. Execution isn’t a one-time thing—it’s a feedback loop. Your speed compounds only if you integrate learnings.
Avoid Debates, Default to Action. Every startup has: people with strong opinions who slow things down, quiet thinkers who don’t speak up but have great ideas, and people with no opinion at all. Great teams don’t spend weeks debating. Instead of trying to please everyone, test a "minimum viable inefficient plan"—then adjust based on reality.
This framework mirrors lean startup principles (e.g., the Business Model Canvas), but its real power is in applying it everywhere—not just to big ideas, but to everything, down to a single marketing campaign. Speed compounds. Start moving.
Rule 2: Great decisions are anchored on expected value
Even great decisions have bad outcomes; ignore the variance of outcomes but focus on decision game theory.
Most founders confuse good decisions with good outcomes—but these are not the same thing. A decision can be flawless on paper and still fail in execution due to randomness, external factors, or just plain bad luck. The best operators—whether in startups, investing, or even poker—don’t chase guaranteed wins. Instead, they optimise for long-term positive expected value (EV) and trust the process over time.
The Reversible vs. Irreversible Decision Framework:
Most decisions are reversible. If you can undo or adjust it easily, don’t overthink—apply Rule 1 (Speed).
Irreversible, high-impact decisions? These require deeper analysis—but not endless debate. The goal isn’t perfection, but making the highest EV bet.
Expected Value (EV) Over Gut Feeling: Let’s break this down with a real-world example founders can relate to – Imagine you're running ads. You have two campaign options:
Campaign A: Costs $1,000, with a 10% chance of landing a big client worth $50,000
Campaign B: Costs $500, with a 20% chance of landing a client worth $10,000.
If you go by gut feeling, Campaign B seems “safer.” But here’s what the math says:
Campaign A: 10% of $50,000 = $5,000 EV
Campaign B: 20% of $10,000 = $2,000 EV
Even though Campaign A has a lower success rate, it’s still the better bet because it compounds into higher returns over time.
The takeaway? The best decisions aren’t about avoiding risk—they’re about consistently choosing the bet with the highest long-term upside.
Sunk Cost & Opportunity Cost (The Hidden Killers): Two mental traps can derail your decision-making –
Sunk Cost Fallacy: The money, time, or effort you've already spent is gone. It shouldn’t factor into your decision—move on.
Opportunity Cost Blindness: Every time you choose one path, you lose the opportunity to invest that same time/money elsewhere. Good decisions factor this in.
Ignore Variance, Trust the Process: Even the right decision can lead to a bad outcome. That doesn’t mean you made the wrong call. If you replayed the situation 100 times, would you still make the same decision? If yes, then stick to it. The best investors, poker players, and startup operators don’t chase short-term outcomes—they optimise for consistency over time.
Use Feedback Loops for Long-Term Decisions: Some decisions won’t show results for years—but that doesn’t mean you should just wait and hope for the best. Find a 6-month or 1-year checkpoint to see if the decision is trending in the right direction. Document your reasoning when making a big decision. Future-you (or your team) will need this context when reevaluating.
If you love poker, investing, or game theory, this mental model will feel familiar—it’s about probability, EV, and repeatability. You should not be trying to “win” every decision—you should just be trying to make the right bets over and over again. Focus less on whether a single choice works out and more on whether your overall decision-making process is sound.
Rule 3: Encode standard operating procedures (SOPs)
SOPs – the biggest waste of time that is not a waste of time.
Startups often resist documentation—it feels like a waste of time. But when scaling, the ability to systemise and document processes is what allows businesses to grow efficiently. Andy Grove’s High Output Management makes it clear: repeatable processes are fundamental to scaling. SOPs ensure consistency, quality control, and delegation, so you can remove yourself from operational bottlenecks. I highly recommend reading and watching Layla from Process Driven—she’s a goldmine on building systems effectively.
Start by Mapping Your Business Processes: Begin with a high-level view of your business value chain, breaking it down step by step:
Identify teams and their core functions.
Break teams down into roles and responsibilities.
Document specific processes within each role.
Prioritise SOPs by Impact & Frequency: Creating SOPs for everything at once is unrealistic. Instead, prioritise them:
High-impact processes first: Identify the processes that cause the most friction or have the highest business value.
High-frequency tasks next: A process repeated 10 times a day should be documented before one done once a year.
The Ideal Scenario: create a culture for documenting new processes any time someone in your team does anything. Here you avoid the backlog of having to prioritise and document SOPs in select windows.
Make SOPs a Living Document, Not a One-Time Task: SOPs should evolve as your business grows. Ensure they:
Are owned by team members who use them daily.
Are audited and updated regularly to prevent them from getting stale
Use SOPs for Efficiency, Hiring & Automation: SOPs aren't just about documentation— since they encode a clear cadence of process (process executed 10 times weekly), they reveal insights about team efficiency:
Identify overworked or underutilised employees. Structure your hiring plan and restructure your roles and responsilibilities based on SOPs
Pinpoint opportunities for automation to reduce manual work.
Use them as training tools for new hires, ensuring they ramp up faster.
At first, writing SOPs feels like extra work. But over time, they become the infrastructure that allows you to scale, delegate, and optimise your business.
Rule 4: Key Performance Indicators - What gets measured gets improved
High output teams are built around key performance indicators with clear incentive and disincentive structures
High-performance teams don’t just work hard; they work towards the right goals. The best way to ensure this? Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Every business, every team, and every individual should be anchored to a KPI that directly reflects: the core job your business exists to do, the main objective of the team, and the primary responsibility of the individual respectively. But KPIs don’t just track performance; they shape behaviour. A poorly chosen KPI can encourage the wrong actions—so always ask: “Does this KPI truly drive the right outcomes?” Here’s a framework to ensure your KPIs actually improve performance:
Avoid Vanity Metrics: A bad KPI is worse than no KPI. The biggest trap? Tracking vanity metrics—numbers that look impressive but don’t drive real value. Example: A startup measures app downloads as a success metric. But if 90% of users never return, is that really success? A better KPI: Daily Active Users (DAU) or Retention Rate. KPIs should always tie back to customer value, not just surface-level activity.
Use Key Risk Indicators (KRIs) to Prevent KPI Manipulation: Every KPI should have a KRI (Key Risk Indicator) to keep it in check. Otherwise, teams will game the system. The lesson? A KPI without a counterbalance creates perverse incentives.
Example: Fraud Detection in a Bank
Goal: Detect 100% of fraudulent transactions.
Easy way to achieve this? Flag every single transaction as fraud. (Obviously, that doesn’t work.)
Solution: Pair fraud detection rate (KPI) with false positive rate (KRI) to ensure accuracy without inefficiency.
This applies across industries:
Marketing: KPI = Leads generated → KRI = Cost per lead (prevents overspending).
Product teams: KPI = Features shipped → KRI = Feature usage (prevents building useless features).
Direct vs. Indirect KPIs: Measuring What You Control: Not all KPIs are equal. Some are fully within your control (Direct KPIs), while others depend on external factors (Indirect KPIs).
Example: Marketing Team KPI Selection
Core business goal: Generate leads for sales.
But leads don’t come out of nowhere. There’s a funnel:
Create awareness (ads, social media).
Drive engagement (people clicking, watching, signing up).
Convert leads (people actually taking action).
So, what’s the KPI?
A marketer’s direct KPI = Campaigns launched (fully controlled).
The indirect KPI = Leads generated (influenced by many factors).
How to set KPIs effectively:
Reward based on indirect KPI (your actual business goal).
Punish based on direct KPI (e.g., execution failures, missed deadlines).
Use strategy meetings to improve direct KPIs in ways that drive indirect KPIs.
Rule 5: Autonomy is key, autonomy is earned, but autonomy does not mean no eye for the details
Leaders delegate but true leadership learns to balance empowerment and accountability.
"Delegate more!" Every founder hears this advice, but delegation without accountability is a recipe for chaos. The best leaders empower their teams while maintaining enough oversight to ensure things don’t go off the rails.
Autonomy Must Be Earned: Not all team members should receive the same level of autonomy. Grant autonomy based on task maturity:
If someone has completed a task multiple times successfully, let them own it.
If they’re new to a task, spend time mentoring them until they can deliver independently. You should not micromanage, but you should also not assume competence where it hasn’t been proven.
Build a System for Growing Autonomous Team Members: Startups can’t always hire the most experienced talent, but they can develop high-potential individuals. Create a system where:
New hires start with low-leverage tasks and gradually take on more responsibility.
There’s a clear progression from guidance to full ownership.
Ongoing mentorship is available, ensuring team members continue growing.
Autonomy Does Not Mean Lack of Oversight: When things run smoothly, founders should step back and let the team shine. But when problems arise, leaders must step in, diagnose the issue, and take corrective action. To balance autonomy and accountability:
Have regular check-ins to ensure alignment.
Define clear ownership of decisions, so mistakes don’t create blame games.
Run post-mortem reviews when things go wrong, focusing on lessons rather than punishment.
The key takeaway? Autonomy isn't about letting go entirely—it's about building a system where people earn trust, take ownership, and remain accountable. For a deeper dive, check out Keith Rabois' How to Operate, which breaks down when to delegate and when not to, alongside other essential management principles.
Rule 6: Decentralise Innovation - the best ideas come from the least likely sources
Build structures that allow ideas to surface both internally and externally
Many founders believe they should be the primary source of innovation. While founders often have key industry insights, relying solely on their vision limits the company’s growth. True innovation happens when ideas flow from every level—team members, customers, and even external partners. So how do you build an innovation pipeline beyond yourself?
Get Your Team to Champion Ideas: Innovation shouldn’t be top-down. Create structured processes to surface ideas internally. This could be through:
A brainstorm board where employees can contribute ideas asynchronously.
A regular “All Minds” meeting where teams discuss, refine, and prioritise ideas.
Listen to Your Customers—They Know What They Need: Your best insights often come from the people using your product. Implement:
Structured feedback loops to capture ideas directly from users.
A clear process for channeling customer insights from sales and customer success teams (teams with most user touch) back to product development.
Have a Clear Execution Framework for Ideas: A raw idea alone isn’t enough—it needs structure. Borrow from Amazon’s Memo Framework: Encourage detailed written proposals that refine concepts before execution. Move fast from ideation to execution—if ideas remain trapped in meetings, they’re useless.
The bottom line? The best innovations happen when ideas are sourced from everywhere, not just the founder’s mind. Build systems that unlock collective creativity, and your startup will move faster than those stuck in the top-down model.
Rule 7: The toughest competitors are those that innovate fast, never those with more money
Ignore the noise. Fundraising announcements, flashy launch events, and media hype might make a startup look successful, but they don’t create real customer value. The startups that win aren’t the ones with the most money—they’re the ones that innovate the fastest. Here’s why:
Big Companies Lose Because of Misaligned Incentives: Many startups succeed not because they have better resources, but because incumbents move too slowly. Example: OpenAI shipped ChatGPT while Google’s AI teams, despite years of research leadership, were slowed down by internal bureaucracy and risk aversion. Startups thrive by focusing on underserved problems, focusing on underserved customer segments or solving them faster or better than large, resource-rich incumbents.
Money Alone Doesn’t Guarantee an Advantage: People assume that having more funding makes a startup unbeatable. But money is often the worst unfair advantage because:
In many industries, capital isn’t the main constraint. Startups fail more often from poor execution than lack of funds.
Too much money kills urgency. Scarcity forces fast execution, lean innovation, and smarter decisions.
Beyond a certain point, capital stops being a competitive edge. In industries like AI (where model training requires millions of dollars), money matters—but only up to a point. Beyond that, the real differentiator is who builds and ships faster.
The Real Advantage? Relentless Innovation: Instead of chasing funding, chase speed of execution. The best companies win by:
Obsessing over customer problems, not valuations.
Iterating fast and getting real-world feedback.
Making decisions quickly and learning from failure.
Raising money isn’t bad—but treat it as a tool, not a milestone. The startups that dominate industries aren’t the ones with the biggest fundraising rounds; they’re the ones that move the fastest. Focus on shipping, learning, and improving. Do that, and funding, customers, and success will follow naturally.
Conclusion
I hope these lessons/rules shed some light on key operational elements for your startup. I’ll be fleshing each rule as its own blog over time as there’s always more than meets than particularly on topics like Standard Operating Procedures, Decision Making, and Key Performance Indicators.
Note that I am still learning and unlearning as I continue building and executing. Therefore, this piece remains a work in progress that I modify and build upon over time.
Finally, looking to learn more about what I have built or are building? Check out Zindua School and Chaptr Global.