Scott Belsky
While starts generate excitement and finishes earn headlines, ventures succeed or fail in the volatile middle stretch, where leaders must constantly optimize what works and endure self-doubt to survive.
Navigating middle-stage volatility requires actively counteracting fear-driven product over-complication during low points and ego-driven misattribution of luck during high points.
In Belsky's first-mile heuristic, onboarding should assume that new users will not read or learn, want the product to make them look good to colleagues or friends, and want it to solve a problem immediately.
Belsky recommends applying iterative experimentation to internal processes that already work, rather than reserving it for customer-facing product features.