There is a seductive myth that whispers to every founder, every ambitious executive. It suggests that the true path to monumental success is not just in building, but in convincing. The myth says: secure that sky-high valuation, win that massive funding round, and the heavy lifting is essentially over. The future is bought with a story, a projection, a compelling narrative of potential. This is the path of the bet—a bet placed on a number that represents not what is, but what could be.
It is, we must admit, an intoxicating prospect. But I have come to believe it is often the harder road, shrouded in hidden thorns. There is another path, one that seems deceptively simple, almost humble in comparison: the path of simply doing more work. Not just any work, but the focused, incremental, and deeply controlled work of building something demonstrably better, more efficient, or more valuable to a specific someone. This path, counterintuitively, is often easier. Not in the sense of requiring less effort, but in the sense of offering the one thing the valuation bet cannot: autonomy.
When you bet on a higher valuation, you are betting on external validation. You are entering a complex game of perception, where your fortunes hinge on market trends, investor sentiment, and competitive narratives. You must craft a story compelling enough to override present realities. This creates an immense, invisible weight. Every decision is filtered through a new lens: “How will this affect our valuation?” It can steer product roadmaps toward buzzwords, hiring toward marquee names, and growth toward vanity metrics. The company’s heartbeat syncs to the rhythm of the next board meeting or funding round. Your control cedes, piece by piece, to the expectations you sold.
The work of doing more, however, is a domain you govern. Its boundaries are the real problems of your customers and the tangible operations of your business. Want to improve margins? You can analyze supply chains, renegotiate contracts, or re-engineer a process. Need deeper customer loyalty? You can personally respond to feedback, refine an onboarding sequence, or add a thoughtful feature. This work is finite, measurable, and its outcomes are directly tied to your actions. There is no story to spin, only a result to observe. The feedback loop is tight and honest. It is the difficult clarity of a craftsman shaping wood, feeling the grain respond to each stroke, rather than the difficult ambiguity of an auctioneer trying to solicit a higher bid for a sculpture only half-carved.
This path is easier because it returns agency to you. The pressure, while still significant, is of a different kind. It is the pressure of execution, not persuasion. It is the satisfaction of a solved problem, not the fleeting relief of a closed round. This work compounds in silence. A slightly better product today leads to a few more retained customers next month, which builds a more predictable revenue stream, which fuels the next improvement. It is a flywheel turned by effort, not by announcement.
The bet on valuation is a lever that promises to move the world with a single, Herculean pull. But securing that leverage often requires handing the other end of the lever to someone else. The work of incremental improvement is a longer, quieter journey where you move the world yourself, inch by inch, through a series of small, sure pushes. You own every step.
In the end, the valuation is a story told to others. The work is a reality you live. Building the reality is often the simpler, surer, and ultimately more freeing endeavor. It may not make headlines tomorrow, but it builds a foundation that can hold the weight of any story, or better yet, no story at all. It builds a business, not just a valuation. And there is an profound ease that comes from knowing that what you have built is unambiguously, undeniably yours.
