Dogmatic vs Scientific Founders

All founders are optimists. If you don't think things can improve, you wouldn't build anything new.

Unfortunately, optimism is necessary but insufficient to be a successful founder. A founder’s success often depends on their source of optimism.

Dogmatic Founders

Dogmatic founders are optimistic in the way a priest is. They know they’re building something people want because they believe they are.

This is the strongest but least effective form of optimism. If your optimism is driven by a belief, it's inexhaustible but myopic. When faced with contradictory evidence, dogmatic founders double down rather than adapt. They see rejection of their product not as valuable feedback, but as a sign that users "don't understand it yet."

Signs you’re a dogmatic founder.

1. Confirmation Bias – They interpret feedback through their existing beliefs. Positive feedback confirms they're right. Negative feedback means users don't understand the vision. There's no situation where they're wrong.
2. Incremental Experiments – Convinced they know what users want, their experiments tend to be small and incremental.
3. Inefficient Learning Loop – They interpret everything through their existing beliefs, rarely gaining new insights. Even with clear evidence their approach isn't working, they attribute failure to external factors rather than their own assumptions.

Dogmatic founders become detached from reality, rarely adapt, and as a result, rarely succeed.

Scientific Founders

Scientific founders are optimistic in the way a scientist is. They have a hypothesis that they’re building something people want, but derive their optimism from (1) evidence supporting their hypothesis and (2) their ability to change it to fit the evidence.

Signs you’re a scientific founder.

1. Look for Negative Evidence – They seek evidence that proves them wrong. They are mindful of confirmation bias, so they investigate why people aren't using their product or what features users dislike.
2. Everything is an Experiment – They treat each feature, marketing campaign, and customer interaction as a learning opportunity. They form clear hypotheses and design quick tests. Most importantly, they're open to being wrong.
3. Optimize for Learning – Their primary goal isn't to be right, but to learn fast. They measure success not by how often they're right, but by how quickly they can improve the accuracy of mental model on what people want.

Scientific founders are constantly adapting and as a result, more likely to succeed.

Choose your religious beliefs however you’d like, but if you’re working on a startup, I recommend being a scientist, not a priest.