Founders are busy people. You are building the car while it is already driving, trying to evolve it from a Flintstones-style contraption into a modern electric vehicle with self-driving ambitions. Investors expect updates, sales need momentum, suppliers need managing, and employees need coaching. The list never ends. In most startups, the most expensive part of the company is the engineering team, and you are counting on them to build the next feature that will unlock growth and bring in new customers. That comes with a responsibility that is easy to underestimate but impossible to outsource: as a founder, you have to help your engineering team build the right thing.
Focus as a superpower
Multitasking is deadly for engineering teams. Pressure to deliver is normal, deadlines are part of the game, and urgency is unavoidable in a startup environment. At the same time, founders are idea machines. New insights, new opportunities, and new “what ifs” surface every week. The real job of a founder is not to generate ideas, but to decide which single idea gets the team’s attention right now because it moves the company closest to its business goal. It is tempting to let teams execute multiple initiatives in parallel, especially when everything feels important and time is scarce, but juggling projects scatters effort, increases context switching, and slows everything down. Engineers end up half-finishing multiple features instead of decisively shipping one. Laser-focused execution, even on something imperfect, will almost always beat diluted progress across several initiatives.
"Wouldn't be nice if ..."
The moment you hear yourself say, “Wouldn’t it be nice if…”, that is your cue to pause and rethink your approach. Every founder should make a single, clear commitment to their engineering team: I will tell you what to build, and that decision will be grounded in conversations with real users. A casual comment at a networking event is not user validation. Someone saying they like your idea over a drink is not a customer interview; it is politeness. Real validation comes from talking to people who are already using your product or who clearly experience the problem you are trying to solve. Sit down with them regularly, discuss the problem space, test your assumptions, and be explicit about the value you think you can deliver. Most importantly, ask whether they would actually pay for the solution. When you get that kind of commitment, you are no longer guessing, and only then does it make sense to put your engineering team to work.
Risk of building the wrong thing
Product management has been mainstream for years, yet first-time founders still fall into the classic “build it, and they will come” trap. I regularly speak with founders who decide what their engineers should build based purely on gut feeling. Sometimes they are right, but often they are not, and the cost of being wrong is enormous. Teams spend weeks or months building a feature, launch it with high expectations, and then… nothing. The painful realisation comes too late: the problem they thought they were solving was not a real problem at all. A few focused conversations with users could have surfaced that insight early, saving time, money, and morale. Building the wrong thing does not just waste effort; it can stall or even break a startup at a critical moment.
Uncomfortable by design
None of this is easy. Talking to engineers about ideas and solutions is comfortable for founders. Getting out there, reaching out to users, and asking uncomfortable questions is not. It requires preparation, vulnerability, and a willingness to hear things you might not like. Yet pushing through that discomfort is essential. Tools and frameworks exist to help, and resources like The Mom Test are excellent guides on how to ask questions that lead to honest answers. What does not work is pitching your solution and asking for validation. When you say, “I’m building this, isn’t it great?”, people will almost always tell you what you want to hear. Their people-pleasing is not a buying signal. Your job as a founder is to cut through that noise, uncover real problems, and provide your engineering team with clarity and focus. Do that consistently, and you dramatically increase the odds that the expensive, talented people building your product are spending their time on work that actually matters.
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