Where I Stand
- I asked my team for CEO feedback. That took guts. But asking is the easy part — acting on the uncomfortable answers is the part that matters, and I don't know if I've done that.
- FeatureOS at $15K MRR with churn eating growth is not peacetime. It's wartime. But I'm running a peacetime playbook — keeping everyone comfortable, avoiding hard calls, polishing surfaces.
- Management debt in a 5-person team is still management debt. It just compounds faster because there's nowhere to hide underperformance.
- "Run toward the darkness" — my pattern is the opposite. When stressed, I retreat to the website, the vault, the blog. That's running toward the light. The darkness is the churning customers, the sales calls I'm not making, the conversation I'm avoiding with someone on the team.
- I make 52%-right decisions on product all day. I avoid 52%-right decisions on people, pricing, and distribution because those feel irreversible.
- Ben says find peer CEOs, not mentors. I consume content from CEOs. That's not the same as being in a room with someone going through the same thing right now.
What I Need to Change
- Write down the one decision I've been avoiding for more than two weeks. Make it by Friday. Not next sprint. Friday.
- Stop consuming CEO content as a substitute for CEO peer relationships. Join or form a small group of bootstrapped founders at similar scale. Actual humans, not YouTube videos.
- Treat FeatureOS churn as a wartime problem. Wartime means some things get cut — features, surfaces, maybe people. Identify what to throw overboard this week.
- The next time I catch myself "improving the website," stop and ask: what hard thing am I avoiding right now? Write it down. Do that instead.
The Hard Question
Is there someone on your team right now who isn't performing, and you're keeping them because firing is harder than tolerating mediocrity?