That may sound brutal, but for a founder, it’s the greatest relief you can carry.
You’re not really afraid of failure.
You’re afraid of the judgment that follows.
The investors’ raised eyebrows.
The market’s whispers.
The silent verdicts from peers.
But here’s the truth every founder needs to hear:
Nobody is thinking about you.
They’re too busy fighting their own fires.
That pitch you bombed?
They’ve already moved on to the next deck.
That product launch that flopped?
The market barely blinked—it’s already chasing the next shiny thing.
That mistake you obsess over late at night?
It doesn’t even make it to their memory bank.
Founders often chain themselves to ghosts of imagined critics.
But the reality is, no one is holding those chains. You are.
So build the damn thing.
Ship the MVP.
Knock on doors.
Send the cold emails.
Ask for the sale.
The world doesn’t measure you by how many times you stumbled.
It remembers you for the times you had the audacity to rise again.
As a founder, liberation begins when you realize this:
No one is thinking about you.
So stop waiting for validation.
Stop waiting for permission.
And start building the company only you can build.
Do you want me to also create the Malay “santai” founder version so it hits closer to the local entrepreneurial community?
Dr. Mazlan Abbas 