257. Why bad work wins

Analysis paralysis is BORING. And it doesn't get you results.

Most founders think they fail because of the market, the product, or the pitch.

But the real killer is a slow mindset.

In this episode, Sophia Matveeva shows you why bad work beats perfect ideas — and how shifting your mindset can be the difference between building real momentum and watching your venture die.

You will learn: 

• Why perfectionism feels smart but keeps you stuck

• How no-code tools tempt you to tinker instead of launch

• Why top founders move fast and embrace imperfection

• How to build momentum before you’re ready — with real-world examples and a challenge for you to do today

Chapters

00:00 The Mindset Shift for Non-Technical Founders
03:07 The Importance of Speed Over Perfection
05:53 Accepting Imperfection in Innovation
09:02 Consequences of a Slow Mindset
11:47 Taking Action Before You're Ready

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Transcript

Sophia Matveeva (00:00.236)
Most founders think that they fail because of the market, the product or the pitch. But the real killer is actually a slow mindset. And the good news is that you can change that. And in this lesson, I'll show you why bad work beats perfect ideas and how shifting your mindset can be the difference between building momentum and watching your venture die.

Sophia Matveeva (00:26.232)
Welcome to the Tech for our Techies podcast. I'm your host, tech entrepreneur, executive coach and Chicago Booth MBA, Safiya Matheer. My aim here is to help you have a great career in the digital age. In a time when even your coffee shop has an app, you simply have to speak tech. On this podcast, I share core technology concepts, help you relate them to business outcomes.

And most importantly, share practical advice on what you can do to become a digital leader today. If you want to have a great career in the digital age, this podcast is for you. Hello, smart people. How are you today? In this lesson, I'm going to talk to you about the joys of bad work.

And if we haven't yet met, I'm Sophia Matveleva. I have built tech businesses without writing a single line of code. I've lectured at Chicago Booth and Oxford and advised founders at Texas and helped governments launch national innovation programs. And today I run Tech for Non-Techies and we're a global education company that I founded from zero. And now this company is trusted by governments and Fortune 500 companies and the top business schools in the world.

and we teach non-technical leaders how to succeed in the digital economy. And so today, I'm going to tell you to drop your standards if you want to be successful. So the number one lesson here is that speed is a mindset. And I've seen a lot of founders and especially corporate innovators think that you need perfect timing, you need perfect conditions, you need perfect information. That's not true. Also, people think that they need perfect features in their product.

Definitely not true because perfectionism is often feared disguised as high standards. And sometimes we do need this high, sky high standards. That's what I'm trying to say. If you're a lawyer, I want you to give me a watertight contract. But if you're a tech innovator, perfectionism in most cases is not going to be relevant unless you're talking about security. And even there, there's actually quite a lot of room for

Sophia Matveeva (02:39.679)
Innovation. So the mindset shift I want you to make is move fast because you're imperfect, not in spite of it. And so here is a story from one of my students and a story that I don't want you to repeat. So I'm going to talk about this founder. Let's call him Alex. And he was a founder in one of my Tech for Non-Technical Founders programs. And he built this platform that connected businesses.

to tend it. So it's a fairly complicated B2B platform. And he actually hired developers to build this thing. And to be honest, when he showed it to me, it was decent. Yes, like it wasn't absolutely amazing, but it was decent. And to complete the course, he needed to interview some users, well, launch the thing and interview some users. And he was one of the very, very few people who didn't complete the course, despite the fact that his product had more investment.

more money, more time, a bigger team had actual developers. It wasn't just him, it was a non-technical founder. And he still didn't manage to complete it. He didn't manage to get his product out. Why? It's because there was one feature that he really wanted his developers to make and they couldn't make it in time. The product was fine without it. He could have launched without it and got some user feedback and then just given the developers time to make this feature. But he was determined that...

The product had to come out with literally all the bells and whistles in his vision. And no matter how much I pushed, no matter what I did, he wasn't budging. So I'll tell you what the other founders did in the same program. They created prototypes, they created products. They were not great products. They didn't look fantastic. They had a lot of stuff missing. But then what they did is they actually went to the market, they got feedback and that feedback allowed them to improve. So.

done is better than perfect and you have to be really practical about it. think about, this is kind of lesson two in this lesson, that yes, we know done is better than perfect, but I want you to think of your product as a conversation and not a monologue. And what I mean is, you know, if you're just having a monologue, I suppose I'm having a monologue with you right now. I am just talking.

Sophia Matveeva (04:55.597)
And I mean, hopefully you will respond by leaving a comment or a rating. That would be wonderful. But you you get me. This is a soliloquy, right? But when you are a product innovator and in the bigger sense, you know, this is one feature of the product. The whole product is the Tech from Techies podcast. This lesson is just one feature. It's a conversation. I'm giving you something and then you are going to respond. You will either respond with ratings, reviews, likes, comments and so on or

you'll respond silently. I'll just be able to see the analytics. And from that, I'll be able to see, okay, I created this thing. How did the audience respond? Okay. Based on that, I will know what to do next. the Alex was having a monologue all by himself and successful innovation requires conversation with your boss and your boss are your customers. So you want an early launch, then you want feedback and then that creates momentum. And

Lesson three in this lesson, so point three in this lesson, is that there is a particular danger of no code tools leading to endless tinkering. And I know this because I have seen this from my wonderful students. So we now have amazing tools like Galileo, like Galileo makes, allows you to make great prototypes, literally just using like writing prompts. You can use Figma to create great designs. You can use Webflow. There is a whole host of things you can do.

And they actually kind of encourage endless fiddling because you can keep on working on the font. You can keep on working on the colors. You can keep on making micro features and you can keep on adjusting things. And this is where you can just get stuck because people end up thinking once it's perfect, once it's aligned with all of our brand values, then I'll launch. You know what? You're not Chanel.

It doesn't matter. Your brand values are not that important. And if you are Chanel, then launch something maybe under a different brand. So if it all goes wrong, nobody knows it too. Okay. So the reality is ship when it's 60 or 70 % decent and then iterate. And my next point, point four is that people who win accept imperfection everywhere, not just in your product.

Sophia Matveeva (07:16.03)
everywhere, the people who succeed accept imperfection, just in products, but across everything they touch. They do not wait for perfect conditions. They do not wait for perfect information. They do not wait for perfect skills. They do not wait for perfect certainty or perfect timing or perfect branding or perfect partnerships or perfect feelings. They're not sitting around thinking I need to feel ready because I mean, I don't think I have ever felt ready for anything, but

You just have to get on with it. You have to make decisions and move fast with what you have. And I am saying this specifically for the non-technical founders and innovators here, because I often see non-technical people using their lack of knowledge as a reason not to move forward. So I often see people who say, well, I've got this idea or, you know, I want to get into this field, but

I just need to take one more course and then I'm going to start working on it. You're not becoming a surgeon. You don't need to take every course in the land, right? If you're listening to this podcast, if you're watching this on YouTube, you have enough information literally in my lessons to just take the next step. So my next point is that there are

high stakes consequences of a slow mindset. So number one is opportunity cost. And that's one of my favorite concepts that comes from the field of economics. Basically, it means that when you are tinkering around with, I don't know, something on Galileo, you are not actually doing something that is going to move you forward. Also, it means that your competitors can learn faster while you're fiddling around. If you have a team,

If you have co-founders, if you have anybody who's working around with you, they basically start losing belief that anything is ever going to really happen or that they're really going to be successful. If launches or feature developments keep on stalling because essentially you are managing by committee, but the committee is sitting in your head. Also, this really does damage investor perception because if you have no momentum, then why would you get funded? And frankly,

Sophia Matveeva (09:32.062)
It is just boring. Nobody admires that. Do you want to be a fuddy duddy or do you want to be a go-getter? I know which one I'd rather be. But you know what? I have a confession to make. So as I was going through the notes for this podcast episode, I realized that actually I was

doing exactly what I'm telling you not to do. So I was delaying making a decision and I was waiting for some sort of perfect information and I didn't even really know what information I waiting for. was kind of just delaying for absolutely no reason. I needed to fire a company that subcontracts to us and I needed to hire another one. And I was just delaying it. And you know, as I was writing this episode for you, then I thought, no, okay, I'm making this mistake. So I literally paused.

I wrote one firing email, I wrote one hiring email and then I come back to it. So my point is none of us are immune from analysis paralysis. And even if you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, I've got this, I know this, I bet you in some area of your life, there is some place where you're not making decision and you're not taking action. So have a look at that and do the thing. Okay. So.

Here are my tips for you. Start before you're ready. Whether you're fundraising, whatever you are doing, whether you're making a product, whether you're pitching, it doesn't matter. So for example, I raised money from investors for my first tech company and my first, my original pitch to investors was terrible and it didn't do really well. But eventually I ended up raising about a million dollars and that means that, you know, it did succeed. But my first ones were really bad and they got better with time. And sometimes it was really embarrassing, but.

So what? I'm still alive. I'm talking to you. I've never built a successful company. It's fine. Okay. In terms of learning, start acting like you are an expert before you really are one, because I bet that you know more than a lot of people in your field. When it comes to strategy, remember that taking action is better than planning paralysis. You are not building an oil rig. Okay. If you are, then you definitely need perfection.

Sophia Matveeva (11:47.692)
but unless you're building an oil rig or a nuclear power station, take action, learn from that and then improve because action creates confidence and confidence is magnetic. And if you're looking for partners, whether co-founders or team members or some sort of corporate partnerships, wherever, like whatever you're looking for, the perfect partner rarely shows up when you're just sitting there looking for a partner. It's literally exactly like dating.

So my advice to you is build with whoever is there now. If it's just you and chat GPT, you two can do a lot of beautiful things together because partners show up when you've got momentum. Partners show up when you're making decisions, launching things and moving forward. So build momentum before you're ready. Your mantra is, this is what I got today and I can make it work. It's like when you look on your fridge,

and you can't be bothered to go out and for some reason, no delivery services are coming to you you're like, okay, these are my ingredients and I got to feed myself. I'm sure you've been in that situation. Okay. So my challenge to you today is launch something this week that you don't feel ready for. So is it going to be a rough draft? Okay. Take that rough draft and make it public. Maybe make a simple landing page. Maybe make a no-frills prototype and get it to people. They just make it, show it to people or maybe

write your first LinkedIn post. And if you do that, then definitely tag me in so I can share it. Or maybe email your dream customer and don't sit there for a whole day drafting this email. Just give yourself an hour to write it, get chat GPT to make it better and then send it and come what may. Maybe something good will happen. Maybe nothing will happen. That's probably even more likely, but do it anyway, because this is how we build confidence. We build

confidence from action and confidence draws people, draws partners to us. And also confidence is what gets us to take more action. And my dear smart person, if this episode helped you fight your inner perfectionist, then I would love to hear from you. So if you're watching on YouTube or on Spotify, then please write me a comment. I'd love to hear from you or just press like. If you are on Apple, have you left the show a rating and a review? It's amazing. You should.

Sophia Matveeva (14:15.306)
Also make sure that you subscribe so you don't miss another episode. Okay, on that note, thank you very much for listening and I shall be back with you next week. Ciao.