• Fail fast, fail often
• Fail forward
• Move fast and break things
• Pivot or die

And the list goes on

I don't know about you, but I'd be okay if I never read a similar phrase again in my life. It's not that they're wrong. They try to compress many truths into 3 to 5 words. But the compression isn't lossless, and the message can't be applied everywhere. It's not enough to just follow these concepts blindly. You have to understand why they exist. Otherwise, you'll most probably create a culture of chaos in your company and in your mind.

In order to begin an entrepreneurial journey, you have to have a vision and you have to be optimistic about the future. That's why everyone preaches to "fail fast", because knowing if your vision is a delusion as early as possible is critical. You want the minimum possible investment of time and money to get that answer. But not less.

Do you see the contradiction here? You have to exist in a conflicting state. Be optimistic about the future, but not that optimistic because you'll probably fail. So don't over-invest. But still stay optimistic that eventually you'll succeed, so don't let failure crush you. This isn't a simple way to live your life. This is a sophisticated state of existence. It's not easy.

Your vision is somehow a prediction. You predict that the thing you're making will appeal to a certain number and type of customers, at a specific point in time. This looks like a long shot regardless of the content of your vision.

The internal conflicts are all over the place. You have to have passion and believe in your vision, otherwise, why bother? But at the same time, you have to be open to the fact that you could be delusional or simply wrong.

The optimistic dreamer and the cautious realist

The optimistic dreamer and the cautious realist should live together and be productive. Good luck. Even if you know that this is the way to go, it's not easy to be in that position and constantly try to balance.

Starting something new means that you're passionate about your vision. But at the same time, they tell you that you have to be ready to pivot. And pivot, sometimes, means that maybe you have to compromise or adapt to something that you're not that passionate about. But hey, you did this to win, right?

One of the reasons I chose to be an entrepreneur is because of the freedom. The freedom to envision and build things. I'm sure that other people will have a different set of priorities. And that's the wonderful thing about entrepreneurship. You get to pave your own path. You get to travel your own journey.

All these clichés certainly compress a lot of wisdom, and although I have an aversion to buzzwords, I always try to unpack them and find the essence of them. There's so much knowledge out there, and I want to be open, to learn and enrich myself and my philosophy. But at the same time, I refuse to follow "orders".

I'm not here to solve a puzzle, I'm here to make an original painting.

Sometimes they do. But often, they don’t.

More often, they know what they think they need, limited by a mindset shaped by the way they've always done things. They believe they know the solution to their problem, but they might not even have identified the real problem. Or they might only grasp 10% of the possible solutions. Or both.

And that’s exactly why they’ve come to you: because you’re the expert. You know things they don’t. But sometimes, let’s be honest, you don’t know either.
And that’s okay.

The myth of knowing

If I ever have children, I’ve promised myself one thing: I won’t pretend to have all the answers. When they ask me something I don’t know, I won’t mask my ignorance or give them a generic, half-assed explanation.

Instead, I’ll say: “I don’t know. Let’s find out together.”

Because in that moment, I’m not just offering honesty. I’m modeling something deeper: That the refusal to disguise not-knowing is a quiet form of courage.

And this response, in my opinion, teaches two crucial principles:

1. Ignorance isn’t a deficit. It’s a doorway.

We live in a world obsessed with certainty. But certainty can be a trap. When we tether our sense of self and our identity to always having an answer to everything, we start to fear the learning process, because it reveals the depth of our ignorance. We become defensive when faced with our knowledge gaps. Rigid. Vulnerable to confirmation bias. More on that idea here: The hedonism of certainty.

It's important to have a clear sense of our ignorance.

It keeps us humble, it keeps us alert. It stops us from becoming know-it-alls in a world constantly bombarding us with half-truths and misinformation. It prevents us from mistaking surface-level knowledge for real understanding.

Uncertainty, when embraced consciously, makes us better thinkers. More curious. More open. More rigorous. It keeps us honest in the current reality of echo chambers (algorithmic or otherwise).

2. Research is a skill, and a shared journey.

You don’t need a PhD to begin investigating something. In 2025, access to information is easy. But the ability to evaluate and synthesize that information? That’s a practice worth cultivating. And searching for answers can be a shared act, not a solitary burden.

(Honestly, How to use a search engine to find credible sources should be part of school curriculums.)

Now, how does this apply to client work?

Sometimes clients are explorers too

Clients may come to you with strong opinions or assumptions. But under the surface, they’re often unsure.
Maybe they know their market, but not how to position themselves in it.
Maybe they don’t fully grasp what they want their business to become.
Maybe they’re unsure how the web will affect them, because they’ve never done this before. There may be no data yet, just hunches.

As professionals, we often believe we’ve collected all the data after an initial round of questions. But I’ve found that if you keep asking, digging, gently pushing, there’s always more. And some of it might change the whole direction of the project (I’ve written about that here).

But what if you’ve asked everything you could think of, and you're still unsure?
What if your client simply does not have the answers?

Make space for shared uncertainty

You make space for shared uncertainty, that's what you do.

You turn that murky space from something awkward and uneasy into something that allows inquisitiveness and creativity. You help your colleagues feel comfortable and inspired in there too.

And then, your clients. They've declared their ignorance, you declare yours, and, together, you start searching for the answers.

This shifts the relationship from expert vs. client to co-explorers of an uncharted territory.

You research, map possibilities, test ideas, ask new kinds of questions. You present your findings, not as declarations, but as hypotheses. Then you discuss. And discuss some more.
You co-discover.

And yes, you charge for all of it. Please.
Because research is not free. It is skilled labor, and it is foundational to everything that comes next.

“By embracing uncertainty, you’re developing a culture that supports innovation and learning through experimentation... one that acknowledges testing new ideas will inevitably lead to some failures.” — William Jung, PO at Macquarie Group | Full article

Embrace uncertainty, let it be a tool.

Your job isn’t always to know. Your job could sometimes be how to not know well.

Clients don’t need you to have all the answers. They need you to help them ask better questions. To help them navigate uncertainty. To stand next to them and say:
“We’re going to figure this out. Together.”

It’s about a Harvard case study, Carter Racing, as it was covered in David Epstein’s book Range. Students are presented with data on a fictional scenario and asked to make a decision based on it. Specifically, whether the company should race or not in the upcoming event.

The article (and the section of the book) describes the process through which the students made their final decision, using the data given to them.

Spoiler alert: Before you go any further, I’m about to spoil the whole point of the article. I suggest reading it first. It’s interesting, it’s short, and it’ll make the following make more sense.

The point of the article is that students spent all their time assessing the data given to them, which was incomplete, without stopping to think that perhaps they could request the missing data from their professor. The professor had mentioned multiple times, “If you want additional information, let me know,” but somehow, no one thought to actually do it.

What’s tragic about this is that the Carter Racing case study is a disguised retelling of a real-world scenario. The 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster, where overlooking the missing data led to the death of all seven crew members on the mission.

There are many conclusions to draw from this story, but it felt strangely familiar, even though I’ve never been anywhere near HBS. And then I started to realize. We’ve been those students. We’ve been those engineers. Thankfully, we haven’t been in the position to be responsible for anyone’s life, but we have been responsible for our clients' budgets, our clients' clients' payments, and so on.

Solving the wrong puzzle

So often, a client comes to us with an idea, a need, or a problem. And so often we take that at face value, accepting that yes, this truly is their problem.

Of course we ask questions, many of them. However, the answers you receive can be outright misleading if the premise behind your questions is flawed.

This is the trap. Clients often come to us mid-thought.

They've already framed the problem in a specific way. They’ve already eliminated options, narrowed the scope, maybe even come up with a solution. Not because they’re careless or lacking insight. They’re just immersed in their own context. What feels obvious or irrelevant to them might be critical for us to understand the full picture.

They might leave out key constraints because to them, those are just obvious, everyday facts. They might not mention internal politics, budget or time flexibility, the bigger picture, or what they’ve tried and failed at before. That last one is the more frequent scenario and usually the most valuable part of the data. Most of the time, it’s not out of secrecy but because they assume it’s not relevant information.

And so, without realizing it, they give us an incomplete puzzle and ask us to find the missing piece, when the edges are all wrong.

The case for un-framing

This is why just asking questions isn’t enough.

One key part of the process, before we start asking or building, is to un-frame.

We need to rewind. To undo the thread and go back to the root, even if that means setting aside our clients' stated goals or proposed solutions for a moment.

Because if we start from a flawed premise, every answer we come up with, even the most brilliant one, will be answering the wrong question.

And if you think about it, that was the problem with Carter Racing too. The students knew they could ask for more data. But for some reason, no one thought to do it. The engineers too.

I think the reason they didn’t ask is the same reason we often don’t: we’re all stuck in our own mindsets. By nature, we’re limited by our own framing and interpretation. That’s why it’s useful to bounce ideas off others. Another mind will almost always offer a different angle, a new frame. Yet, instead of becoming this "bouncing wall" for our clients, we so often tend to accept the stated problem and rush toward a solution.

And it’s no mystery why. That’s what the human brain does best: seeking solutions. It’s an evolutionary trait that helped us survive and be here now. Our brains do not want to spend endless amounts of time digging for the true problem. That would be terribly inefficient in most cases. We love finding solutions. We don’t love relentless digging.

But as professionals, when we feel the urge to put our solution caps on, I believe that’s exactly when we need to stop and think: “Am I solving the right puzzle? Am I asking the right questions?”

But still, writing code is an act of communication as much as writing is. Many fellow coders don't treat it like that, but they should. Coders compose worlds. Coding is about communicating with other coders or your future self. The way you express your program is a combination of experience, ideas, and opinions on how to structure processes and flows. There are countless opportunities and decisions on how you would express and solve the task at hand. Coders can and should be considered writers.

That's why I expect myself to be able to communicate my thoughts clearly in prose. If I can't do it in plain English, how can I expect myself to do it in code? In a way, these two go hand in hand. If writing is walking in the park, coding is riding a broken bicycle while drunk. So what am I? I am in the business of communicating ideas, constructing worlds, understanding workflows, and ultimately understanding my potential users, other people. Because not only am I a coder, I also sell a product. Other humans will use it. Both development and promotion are a unified process of throwing what once was in my head back into the world.

As a coder, I consider writing and promoting my product a chore. Something that doesn't suit my personality and the way my brain works. But as I dive deeper into it, I realize that maybe I am wrong. Maybe writing and expressing myself in English is exactly what I need. Deconstructing my vision and trying to get it across is like doing psychotherapy in public. I will certainly not be going to share my darkest thoughts, but I am going to be part of this evolutionary exchange of ideas and feelings.

So yeah, I am a full-time writer. I just don't accept it yet.

I wanted to use Numenon and have someone else build it. I knew very well that I have a need that isn't covered by the tools available in the market, and together with Elvira we decided about half a year ago to take the leap.

I don't know if it will succeed as a startup - time will tell. But it's the first time in my life I feel such great satisfaction from the result. We built something we need and we use it every day, having replaced many other tools.

Something else that has great value is that Numenon potentially appeals to everyone. I can tell friends to go and "play" with it. Organize your personal life. Use it in your company or department. Use it for research or your next music album. It's really that versatile.

Numenon right now is a SAAS knowledge management system. Parts of it might remind you of Notion or Obsidian or something similar. We give you the freedom in how to structure information and make connections by creating a graph. You can use this graph in any way you can imagine. From building a CRM to creating a board game (we have beta testers doing this).

The concern for Numenon was that it should stand strong both theoretically and practically. We achieved this and it's already a very useful tool for quite a few people.

Now the vision is to develop it in the following areas: Collaboration, Security, Interactivity and AI.

It happened to be an opinion I already agreed with. So, when the video ended, I noticed in myself a sense of satisfaction, a quiet pleasure. And I thought, "A-ha! Gotcha!" I had caught myself in a moment of joy, purely stemming from confirmation bias. A simple process of my stupid little brain going:

"I believe x about the world. I am now presented with data supporting x. Oh yes, so nice. I was right. I am safe. I have understood the world. I know how its cogs turn. I am safe."

I like to think of myself as a critical thinker. A skeptic. An inquiring mind. I take pride in the idea that I hold my beliefs lightly. That I don’t associate my personal value with my beliefs and can therefore shift my opinions when presented with new data.

But it seems I, too, am a human being, drenched in insecurity, burdened with the fear of this chaotic, unpredictable, uncontrollable world. And I, too, have moments where I take pleasure in a false sense of certainty and in the idea of control, of clarity, of having peered through the glass to see the hidden levers at work.

And it was in that exact moment, where I felt that pleasure, that I understood. It’s precisely when I detect that feeling that I need to be as vigilant as ever. That’s where we fall victim to our own biases and insecurities. That’s the moment to challenge our beliefs, to feel exposed, to embrace the fear of uncertainty.

It's not a coincidence that all conspiracy theories, half-truths, and pseudo-intellectual mambo jumbo play precisely on that human need for certainty. They present themselves not as possibilities or perspectives, but as absolute truths. They package themselves as airtight narratives, neatly tied together with pseudo-evidence and emotional appeal. They offer certainty beyond doubt, a place where everything makes sense, where no gaps remain, and no questions linger. They give you both the questions and the answers, pre-framed within their worldview. And by doing that, they don’t just feed you information, they erode your curiosity. They disarm your capacity to ask new or different questions, to explore beyond the frame they've set. It's not just misleading, it’s paralyzing.

After watching the reel, I looked up the papers mentioned and read more about the topic. As it often happens with complex matters, things weren’t as simple as the person in the reel made them seem. I had to shift my point of view. I had to accept that it’s one of those cases where nuance matters. And that, based on the data I could find, I couldn’t comfortably land on either side. I had to sit in that very uncomfortable middle ground.

It’s an awkward place. I imagine it as a chair that looks normal but whose seat is ever so slightly rotated, just enough to make sitting on it feel wrong. Or a ledge with a few sharp spikes that never quite let you settle. Not painful. Just uneasy.

But the more often you choose to sit there, the more you recognize that so much of life exists in that in-between space.
And still, it doesn’t get easier. You thought I’d say it becomes second nature, but no.
It remains unsettling, if not terrifying, at times.

But you do learn to live with it.
And more importantly, you learn to look for security elsewhere: in a flexible belief system, a resilient mind, a healthy lifestyle, in deep and meaningful relationships.

But opinions?
Those mofos won’t make you feel safe.
You better let that idea go.