Post by Vladimir Keil

Sunday Post: Protect your original thinking from social pressure If you want to be original, prepare to be misunderstood. Keeping original thinking is hard. But it’s even harder to protect. I considered myself quite good at it, but still found myself almost giving it away in a single sentence. I was standing in our Munich hallway — the one that, few months ago, held a single office and a 10-person team. Now it can barely contain the ten new people joining every week. An employee complained that the pace felt uncertain and uncomfortable. Without missing a beat, I said: “Don’t worry, that’s why I’m hiring.” My mouth moved before my mind caught up — and I knew it was wrong. Not wrong as in cruel, but wrong as in untrue. A borrowed answer. The kind you give when the room is pulling you toward the path of least resistance. This wasn’t the reason I am hiring. In contrast: I am hiring to build the best procurement agents in the world — to implement faster, to expand the product, and to reach more customers before anyone else does. To win. Not to slow down the pace. Our pace is a signal. $30M means 30x the pace. What this taught me: noise doesn’t just come from outside. It comes from the people in your building. From well-meaning advisors. From the pressure to be reasonable, to be liked, to have a good answer ready. For founders, every decision to be liked over being true to your vision erodes that original edge. Call it what you want — a personality trait, discipline, or a muscle. But what it requires is that you constantly ask yourself: is this what I actually believe, or is this the answer the room wants? Sometimes these two feel identical in the moment — and that’s what makes it hard. If you’re building something new — whether as a founder, investor, or on the front lines of a startup — protecting your original thinking is your only reliable edge.