Escape Founder NPC Mode: Finding Your Authentic Voice

Hey Reader,

Just like that, without realizing it, you go from founder to NPC. From having a clear vision, some moxie, and a bold idea, to being pushed into normalcy as the market never stops telling you that you're doing it wrong.

NPC often happens in moments of desperation, where you stop (or are forced to stop) critically evaluating, questioning, investigating, and instead go with the flow, follow the popular, execute the so-called "right" advice. Just like the background characters in video games.

This isn't hyperbole. It's an epidemic. (Yes, the irony, claiming not to be hyperbolic, then using hyperbole.)

(NPC. Non-Player Characters. The background nobodies in video games not controlled by players, the ones with no agency.)

TL;DR NPC thinking isn't inherently bad. There's a time to follow the script and a time to rewrite it. Your job is to work out which, when & where.

It's Almost Impossible.

This is not a contrarian conversation, it's principled decision making, and it is so impossibly tough to do. It's not like you try to become an NPC. It just happens. The market has a way of wearing you down.

You're not telling a VC to back off, even if their advice derails your vision.

You won't stop a customer from requesting a feature when they're about to sign.

We all do it. Because we can't afford not to. Because we are desperate. Because we are scared it might turn into a no.

The era when everyone was building chatbots or when growth hacking was the only marketing playbook that mattered or when every pitch deck had to have a hockey stick graph? That's NPC in action. Sure, worked great for some founders, but most who just followed the keyword crowd crashed, because it just wasn't authentic to their startup.

Sound familiar?

NPC Thinking & You.

Uber did this, Zuck did that, Lenny said this, YC startups do that, all of it, feeding you their story disguised as good advice. And it is good advice, great advice even. Theirs. Not yours. And that's just the outsiders.

Insiders too. Customers asking for features you don't want to build. Engineers pushing for a refactor. Advisors with suggestions. Prospects demanding useless additions. Everyone wants to mold you into their version of a founder.

Other founders parroting the same pitches, with the same investor deck template, same outbound tech stack, same buzzwords, same whateves, building the same forgettable products.

Every accelerator, pitch competition, and "disruptive" startup is one in an army of clones. We are "the Uber for X" or "AI-powered blockchain solution" - You recognize the script, because you've been reciting it.

Even me. Every week, I send a strategy, a thought, a question. Playbooks, pricing, tactics. I fight hard not to give advice, but instead ask you reasonable questions I think you should be able to answer. I am just another voice with a view.

NPC thinking is a scapegoat that lets you avoid the hard questions, because you're following best practices. But.. you are losing your voice and worst of all, it's making you, by mistake, reactive.

Back. To. Basics.

When do you follow, when do you iterate, make yours, adapt, disrupt? Impossible to answer, but here's a view.

Universal truths might be safe, but they're not game-changing. Best practices are brilliant, playbooks are helpful, but you have to fight to keep what makes you uniquely you.

Your job is to know when to follow them, when to adapt them, and when to ignore them. Copying the safe moves is a strategy, just likely not a winning one, and you should probably still do them. But the wins normally come from the unique decisions only you can make.

NPC thinking is comfortable. It's safe. It's what everyone else is doing. Safety. Does. Not. Win.

It all comes down to a this. Are you doing what is the "right" thing to do, or what's right for your startup, your vision, your customers?

This is not a founder pep-talk, I'm just asking, are you the protagonist in your story?

I know. A really shitty, impossible, paradox of a newsletter to read on a Sunday.

Sorry. Not sorry.

As always, if I can be of service, feel free to grab time.

LFG.

-- James