✍️ Essay
✓ Link checked
Free
Intermediate
Why we picked it
This is the piece that named the flat middle. Chen maps the exact stretch you are in: the launch hype is gone, product/market fit is not here yet, and every day feels like you are uniquely failing. His core reframe is that you are not, every startup crosses this valley, and his practical prescription is the same as ours: chase small tactical wins to keep morale and momentum alive while you grind toward fit.
From
andrewchen.com
by Andrew Chen
12 min read
- The trough between launch and product/market fit is a predictable phase, not a personal failure, so stop reading it as a verdict on you.
- Manufacture morale with small tactical wins rather than waiting on the big revenue moment that is not coming yet.
- Keep the team small and nimble in the trough so you can run more product iterations per unit of runway.
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andrewchen.com →
📄 Article
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Free
Intermediate
Why we picked it
This is the cleanest articulation of the exact move we are recommending: stop staring at the lagging revenue line and instead track the controllable inputs that drive it. From the authors of Working Backwards, it gives you a concrete method (metrics mapping, drilling from your goal down to the drivers you actually control) to build a small set of weekly input targets, conversations, ships, experiments, that you can move on your own this week.
From
Working Backwards (workingbackwards.com)
by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
15 min read
- Output metrics like revenue are lagging and cannot be manipulated directly, so they make a demoralizing weekly scoreboard.
- Controllable input metrics are the levers your actions move now, and hitting them is what eventually moves the outputs.
- Use metrics mapping to drill from the goal you want down to the handful of inputs you can actually control, then track those weekly.
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workingbackwards.com →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked
India
Freemium
Intermediate
Why we picked it
This is the founder-depression piece written for the Indian context, and it earns its place by pairing raw first-hand accounts with a clinician's view instead of just quoting motivational tweets. Founders describe being completely shattered after rejection and starting therapy (Piyush Kumar of Rooter, Nikhil Taneja on nine months of therapy for clinical anxiety), while psychotherapist Deepti Singhal supplies the professional lens the question asks for. It also names the specifically Indian pressures, family skepticism about the risk, the cultural need to project success, that make it harder for an Anywhere Founder here to admit they have slipped.
From
Inc42
by Inc42 Staff, with psychotherapist Deepti Singhal
15 min read
- Indian founders openly describe crossing from stress into clinical territory and, crucially, into therapy, normalizing professional help as the fix rather than more grit.
- A practising psychotherapist notes that a single honest tweet drove 68+ people to book sessions, showing how much unmet need sits silently in the ecosystem.
- The cultural barriers (vulnerability read as weakness, pressure to look like you are winning) are the reason founders here miss their own warning signs, so naming them is the first defense.
Open
inc42.com →