a contrarian's path to building business

Today, I was curious about "what if I ask AI to give me advice about building a business, but on a contrarian's path?". At first, it did give me the advice I expected, but I don't like the typical bullet format response. So instead, I asked to turn the advice into a narrative format. I found this to be an interesting read.

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The Breaking Point

Maya stared at her bank account: $4,327 left. At her current burn rate, that gave her exactly 53 days before she'd have to crawl back to her corporate job, another startup failure statistic.

Around her, the co-working space buzzed with the familiar soundtrack of startup culture. "We're disrupting the entire industry," the guy with the Patagonia vest told a potential investor two tables over. "Our TAM is $47 billion."

Three tables down, a woman with purple hair practiced her pitch. "We're the Uber for dog walking," she repeated for the twelfth time that hour.

Maya closed her laptop and stepped outside, the cool air a relief from the stifling atmosphere of forced optimism and rehearsed pitches. For six months, she'd been trying to build a business the "right way"—the way all the podcasts, books and Y Combinator blog posts instructed. And for six months, she'd accomplished nothing but draining her savings and collecting rejections.

"What if everything I've been taught about building a business is wrong?" she wondered, watching rush hour traffic crawl by. "What if there's another way?"

The Boring Breakthrough

Two weeks later, Maya found herself in her uncle's warehouse. The concrete floor vibrated as forklifts zipped between towering metal racks. Workers squinted at smudged printouts, cursing under their breath as they manually counted inventory for the third time that day.

Her uncle pointed to a dusty computer terminal running software with a distinctly Windows 95 aesthetic. "We've tried everything," he sighed, rubbing his calloused hands together. "Three different systems in the last two years. But nothing quite works for our specific needs in chemical distribution. The big systems are designed for retail or manufacturing, not our regulatory requirements."

That night, instead of returning to her "revolutionary" app idea, Maya sketched a simple solution to her uncle's inventory problem on the back of a restaurant napkin. Not a platform. Not an ecosystem. Just a focused tool solving one specific pain point for one specific industry.

"What if the real opportunity isn't creating something revolutionary," she wondered, taking a photo of her sketch before the waiter cleared it away, "but solving boring problems exceptionally well?"

Six months later, Maya had her first paying customer—her uncle's company, at $2,500 per month. A year later, she had ten customers, all found through direct conversations at industry trade shows and referrals, each paying a substantial monthly fee for software that addressed their specific pain point. No venture capital. No pitch competitions. No "growth hacking." Just revenue from day one.

"The businesses that get attention aren't necessarily the ones that make money," she realized one night, reviewing her now-healthy bank balance. "And the ones that make money often get very little attention."

The Funding Fallacy

Meanwhile, her friend Ethan pursued the conventional startup path. His sleek app idea had won three pitch competitions. He'd raised an impressive $1.2 million seed round from angels who loved his vision for "revolutionizing consumer behavior." Tech blogs featured his founding story with flattering headshots. At social gatherings, he was the entrepreneurial success in the room, collecting admiring glances and business cards in equal measure.

But eighteen months in, behind the carefully curated social media posts, reality was far less glamorous. The funding clock was ticking like a time bomb. Investors expected hockey-stick growth. Each board meeting became increasingly tense as metrics failed to meet projections. His co-founder had stopped making eye contact during meetings.

"We need to raise another round," he told Maya over coffee, dark circles under his eyes betraying sleepless nights. His fingers trembled slightly as he stirred his third espresso. "We're burning through cash faster than expected. Another six months and we're done."

"What if you focused on revenue instead?" Maya suggested. "Actually charge users for your product?"

Ethan looked at her like she'd suggested breathing underwater. "We need scale before monetization. That's the playbook. Monetize too early and growth stalls." He recited this like scripture, though doubt flickered across his face.

Two years in, the contrast was undeniable. Ethan had an impressive LinkedIn profile, press features, and zero dollars in his company bank account. His last investor meeting had ended with the dreaded "show us more traction" brush-off. He couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, and couldn't admit to anyone that his "successful" startup was 90 days from collapse.

Meanwhile, Maya's "boring" business had just cleared $83,000 in monthly recurring revenue. No press. No awards. Just steady cash flow, grateful customers, and the quiet confidence that comes from building something real.

"The greatest freedom," Maya realized, watching Ethan check his phone every two minutes for potential investor responses, "isn't a massive valuation on paper. It's having customers who pay you more than it costs to serve them."

The Service Before Software Insight

When Lucas joined Maya's growing team as product manager, he brought ambitious plans for product expansion. Fresh from a high-profile tech company, he arrived with spreadsheets, competitive analyses, and a roadmap dense with features.

"We need to build these additional features immediately," he insisted during his first week, pointing to his color-coded product matrix. "Our competitors already have them. We're falling behind the market."

Instead of approving his roadmap, Maya handed him a plane ticket. "Before you write a single line of product requirements, I need you to spend three days with Southeastern Chemical Supply."

Lucas returned from the customer visit with wide eyes and a completely different perspective. They'd spent days watching warehouse staff struggle with workarounds, listening to compliance officers describe regulatory nightmares, and observing the real-world conditions their software operated in—including spotty internet and workers wearing chemical-resistant gloves.

"Before we build anything new," Maya explained as Lucas tore up his original roadmap, "we need to deeply understand the problems we're solving. Sometimes that means providing services before crystallizing them into software."

This approach became their competitive advantage. While competitors built features based on market research and competitor analysis, Maya's team embedded with customers for weeks, providing manual services and process consulting before writing a single line of code. When they finally built features, they solved problems their customers actually had, not problems their competitors thought they should address.

"The conventional wisdom says to build scalable products immediately," she observed, watching Lucas sketch a completely new roadmap based on actual customer observations. "But starting with services gave us something more valuable than scale—it gave us insight no competitor could easily replicate."

The Niche Advantage

At an industry conference, Maya found herself at the same dinner table as Bradley Chen, founder of InventoryAI, a venture-backed competitor. His company had just raised $50 million in Series B funding to "revolutionize inventory management across all industries" with their AI-powered platform.

"What's your focus?" he asked Maya between bites of overcooked salmon, barely looking up from his phone.

"Just the specialized needs of chemical distributors," she replied, somewhat embarrassed by the narrowness compared to his grand vision.

He laughed, finally giving her his full attention. "That's way too small a market. You'll never scale there. Our platform works for everything from retail to manufacturing to pharmaceuticals."

Yet three years later, Maya's company dominated that specific niche, with 70% market share and customers who spoke about her software with genuine affection. Her team understood the chemical distribution industry so deeply that competitors couldn't touch them. They knew the regulatory requirements, industry terminology, and workflow nuances that made their solution indispensable.

Meanwhile, InventoryAI struggled with the complexity of serving everyone at once. Their generic solution proved inadequate for any industry's specific needs. Bradley's LinkedIn now listed him as "Advisor" to the company after the board replaced him with a professional CEO to stop the cash bleed.

"The conventional wisdom says to address the largest possible market," Maya noted in her company all-hands meeting. "But there's often more opportunity in being indispensable to a small market than irrelevant to a large one."

The Solo Founder Reality

When Maya's business partner wanted to leave the company two years in, her first reaction was panic. Every startup book and blog insisted that solo founders were doomed to failure. "You need complementary skills," the experts warned. "No one person can do it all."

But as she negotiated the buyout terms, an unexpected realization dawned: many decisions had become simpler without the need for consensus. Product direction, hiring choices, and strategic priorities that once required lengthy debates now moved forward with clarity and purpose.

While startup literature emphasized the necessity of founding teams, Maya discovered that solo leadership created a consistency that partnership sometimes complicated. She built a diverse advisory board for guidance and hired executives with complementary skills, but maintained singular vision and decision-making authority.

"The myth of the mandatory co-founder nearly prevented me from starting at all," she reflected, signing the final buyout papers with a strange mixture of anxiety and relief. "Sometimes conventional wisdom becomes so accepted that we don't even question its premises."

Her company didn't suffer from the transition—it thrived. Without the friction of competing visions, the team executed more efficiently. Employees appreciated the consistency of direction. The business accelerated rather than stalled.

"Maybe the real question isn't whether you need a co-founder," she realized, "but whether you have the self-awareness to recognize what you don't know, and the humility to seek help in those areas."

The Systems Over Heroes Revelation

As the company grew past twenty employees, Maya noticed a pattern among other founders in her network. Many built businesses that couldn't function without them—their companies were essentially extensions of their personal productivity, requiring their constant involvement in every decision from marketing copy to hiring to customer support.

She deliberately took a different approach, investing significant time documenting processes, creating systems, and building a business that could operate without her constant presence. This meant slower growth initially, as she dedicated precious hours to documentation and training rather than just executing herself.

"Building systems feels less productive than doing the work," she observed one night, finishing a detailed customer onboarding playbook instead of responding to sales emails. "But a business that depends entirely on its founder isn't really a business—it's just a demanding job you've created for yourself."

Her team initially resisted the documentation requirements. "This is slowing us down," her sales director complained. "I could close three more deals in the time it takes to document our process."

But the investment paid off three years in when Maya took a six-week sabbatical—something her founder friends thought impossible. The business not only survived but thrived in her absence, with clearly documented processes guiding the team through routine decisions. When she returned, refreshed and full of new ideas, she found the company had actually accelerated without her daily involvement.

"The founder who can't take a vacation hasn't built a business," she realized. "They've built a cage."

The Growth Paradox

At a founder dinner in San Francisco, conversation inevitably turned to growth metrics. Other entrepreneurs shared impressive month-over-month growth statistics, each trying to outdo the last.

"We're growing 22% month-over-month," said the founder of a delivery app, though he quickly changed the subject when someone asked about unit economics.

"We added 50,000 users last month alone," boasted another, carefully avoiding mention of the free promotion that acquired those non-paying users.

When Maya's turn came, she hesitated, swirling her wine glass. "We're actually intentionally slowing our growth right now to ensure our quality doesn't suffer. We turned down twelve potential clients last quarter because they weren't the right fit."

The table fell silent, as if she'd confessed to a cardinal sin of entrepreneurship. A few founders exchanged glances that mixed confusion with pity.

Later that evening, as they waited for their Ubers, one founder pulled her aside. "I wish we had done that," he confided, glancing around to ensure no one overheard this heresy. "We grew so fast that our systems broke, our early customers got neglected, our culture suffered, and we're now spending more fixing problems than we would have if we'd grown more deliberately. But our investors keep pushing for more, faster."

Maya realized that controlled, profitable growth had created options that rapid expansion often eliminated. Without investor pressure, she could prioritize sustainability over speed, building a business designed for longevity rather than exit. She could say no to bad-fit customers, invest in team development, and make decisions with a five-year horizon instead of scrambling to hit next quarter's targets.

"The conventional startup path optimizes for a specific outcome—acquisition or IPO," she reflected during her flight home. "But what if you're building something you want to run for decades? Different goals require different strategies."

The Execution Emphasis

Five years in, Maya was invited to speak at her alma mater's entrepreneurship program. The auditorium buzzed with eager students clutching business model canvases and pitch decks. They peppered her with questions about her "big idea" and the "eureka moment" that launched her company.

"The truth is less dramatic," she admitted, disappointing those hoping for an inspirational lightning-strike story. "The idea was simple—even obvious. The difference was execution."

She explained how countless entrepreneurs had similar ideas but failed in implementation. The value wasn't in the concept but in the thousands of small decisions, consistent execution, and persistent problem-solving that turned concept into reality.

One student raised his hand. "But without a truly innovative idea, how do you compete with established players who might copy your solution?"

"Execution is the moat," Maya replied. "Anyone can copy an idea. Few can copy thousands of correct decisions, deep customer relationships, and organizational knowledge built over years."

She showed them a slide of her company's first product—embarrassingly basic compared to their current offering. "This is what we launched with. It was ugly. It had bugs. But it solved a real problem better than anything else available to our customers."

"We celebrate ideation because it's romantic," she told the now-quiet students. "But business success comes from the unsexy work of consistent implementation. Ideas are multipliers of execution—but without execution, even the best ideas equal zero."

The Long Game

Ten years after that initial coffee shop moment, Maya sat on her back porch, laptop open but ignored. She watched her kids playing in the yard while taking a Tuesday afternoon off—something her founder friends with investors and boards could never do.

Her phone buzzed with a text from Ethan: "Starting a new venture. Taking meetings with VCs next week. Want to invest?"

Maya smiled and set the phone down without responding. Some lessons had to be learned firsthand.

Her company wasn't featured in tech publications. She hadn't raised venture capital. The business solved boring problems in an unglamorous industry. Yet it employed fifty people with full benefits, generated $14 million in annual revenue with healthy margins, and allowed her to design her life around what mattered most.

That morning, a major competitor had announced their exit to a private equity firm. The founders would make millions but were required to stay for four-year earnouts, essentially becoming employees again. Meanwhile, Maya retained full control of her company and her time.

"The greatest contrarian insight wasn't any specific business strategy," she concluded, closing her laptop to join her kids in the yard. "It was recognizing that entrepreneurial success comes in many forms, and the most celebrated path is often not the most likely to succeed."

In a business culture obsessed with unicorns and disruption, perhaps the most contrarian choice was building a sustainable business that solved real problems, generated actual profits, and created genuine value—even if nobody ever made a documentary about it.