I wasn't going to send this today.
But I've been sitting with something all week and I think you need to hear it too.
Can I be honest with you for a second? I know it’s 8pm.
I’ve been thinking about failure a lot this week.
Not in a dramatic way. Not in a “I’m giving up” way. Just in that quiet, 2am kind of way where you’re staring at the ceiling and your brain won’t stop asking, what if this doesn’t work?
I’m new to this. IN60 is new. And every single day I’m making decisions about a thing I genuinely believe in, with no guarantee that belief is enough. That’s the part nobody tells you about building something. It’s not the workload. It’s not the late nights. It’s the uncertainty. The fact that you can do everything right, show up every day, build the thing, tell the story, put in the hours, and still have no idea how it ends.
That alone is enough to keep you up at night.
And I think about founders a lot. The ones I’ve interviewed. The ones building quietly with no audience, no investor backing, no guarantee of anything. Just a idea they believe in and the audacity to keep showing up for it. I think about what it costs them, mentally, emotionally, to carry something that could work or could fall apart, and to keep going anyway.
I think about my own future too. What I’m building, where it’s going, whether any of this adds up to something. Some days the answer feels obvious. Other days it genuinely doesn’t.
But here’s what I keep coming back to.
The fear doesn’t mean stop. The fear means you care. And caring, genuinely, deeply caring about what you’re building, is actually the rarest thing in this whole ecosystem. Most people never get far enough into something to even feel this kind of scared. The fear means you’re in the game.
And being in the game, even on the uncertain days, is already more than most people will ever do.
So if you’re building something right now, a startup, a product, a career, a version of yourself you’re not sure the world is ready for, I just want you to know that the doubt you’re feeling is not a sign that you’re doing it wrong. It might actually be a sign that you’re doing it right.
Keep going. Not because success is guaranteed. But because you haven’t found out yet what you’re actually capable of.
And neither have I.
Didn’t plan this one. Just felt like you needed to hear it, or maybe I needed to say it out loud.
Talk soon. ❤️