dailyprompt-2152 – Dr. Mazlan Abbas

Certainty Is a Luxury Most Founders Don’t Have

For a long time, I believed waiting was a sign of wisdom.

Wait until the data is solid.

Wait until the market matures.

Wait until the signals become clearer.

It sounded reasonable. Safe, even.

But the longer I stayed in entrepreneurship, the clearer one truth became. Waiting for certainty is not a strategy. It is a luxury. And not everyone can afford it.

Certainty usually belongs to those who are already comfortable. Those with more resources. More time. More room to be wrong. For most founders, reality looks very different. We move under constraints, under constant pressure, with a cost of waiting that rarely gets discussed.

I have been in rooms where everyone agreed it was “not the right time yet.”

Not enough evidence.

Not enough traction.

Not enough support.

On paper, they were right.

But time did not pause. Each month of waiting raised the price. The team started asking where we were headed. Partners went quiet. Small but critical opportunities disappeared without any announcement.

No alarms.

No red lights.

Just a slow, growing weight.

That was when I realised something uncomfortable. Certainty rarely appears before movement. It often shows up after a decision is made and you live with the consequences. Not before.

Many founders fall into the same trap. They believe waiting reduces risk. In reality, it only delays decisions and adds a different kind of risk. Burnout. Lost momentum. A team that slowly loses trust, not because of a wrong call, but because no call was made.

There is a real difference between patience and paralysis.

Patience still moves forward, even if slowly.

Paralysis feels calm, but it is quietly moving backward.

I learned to tell them apart the hard way.

There were moments when I had to move before I felt ready. Not because I was fully confident, but because the cost of waiting had become higher than the cost of acting.

This is not about blind courage. It is about reading context.

When data is incomplete, I ask different questions. Will waiting truly bring meaningful information? Or is it only offering temporary comfort?

If it is the second, I know I am hiding behind logic.

Here is something rarely said out loud. Certainty often favors those who arrive later. Those who enter after the market takes shape. After early mistakes are made. After paths are cleared.

Early founders do not get that privilege.

They move through fog. They learn while walking. They make imperfect decisions so others can make safer ones later.

Once I accepted this, my view of waiting changed.

Waiting stopped being the default. It became a strategic choice that needed justification. If I wait, I must know exactly what I am waiting for and what price I am willing to pay.

If there is no clear answer, it is not strategy. It is avoidance.

I also learned this. Leadership is not about always being right. It is about being accountable. Teams do not demand perfect certainty. They ask for direction, even if that direction gets adjusted later.

Today, I still wait when it makes sense. But I do not wait to feel confident. I wait only when waiting adds real value.

Otherwise, I move.

Because in entrepreneurship, certainty is not the starting line. It is a byproduct of steady action and the courage to choose, even with limited information.

And that is the luxury many people do not realise they do not have.

How I Made Decisions Without Enough Data

Early in my entrepreneurial life, I believed good decisions came from clarity.

Clear numbers. Clear projections. Clear signals from the market.

I waited for them.

They rarely arrived.

Over time, I learned something uncomfortable. Most meaningful decisions are made when the picture is incomplete, the data is noisy, and the consequences are real. Not because founders are reckless, but because waiting for certainty often means missing the moment entirely.

I did not realise this at first. Like many engineers, I trusted data. Like many professionals, I believed preparation would eventually remove doubt. It took years to accept that uncertainty is not a phase to pass through. It is the operating environment.

The question was no longer how to eliminate uncertainty, but how to decide inside it.

I remember sitting in front of options that all felt wrong in different ways. One path carried financial risk. Another risked credibility. A third preserved comfort but quietly stalled progress. None came with assurance. None came with full information.

So I asked myself a different question.

Not “Which choice is safest?”

But “Which risk am I willing to live with?”

That shift changed how I decided.

Most founders frame decisions as binary. Right or wrong. Success or failure. But reality is more layered. Every decision trades one set of risks for another. The mistake is believing that waiting reduces risk. Often, it only changes the type of risk you inherit.

There were moments when I had only partial signals. Early interest that had not converted. Partnerships that sounded promising but lacked commitment. Technologies that worked in controlled settings but had not yet proven scale.

I could have waited.

Many do.

But waiting carries its own cost. Teams lose momentum. Windows close quietly. Confidence erodes without a visible reason. Nothing looks broken, yet nothing moves forward.

I learned to accept decisions made at 60 percent confidence.

Not because I was comfortable with uncertainty, but because I understood the cost of hesitation.

This did not mean ignoring data. It meant recognising when data had done all it could. Beyond a point, more analysis stopped being insight and started becoming delay.

There is a difference.

When I look back, the decisions that mattered most were not the ones backed by the strongest numbers. They were the ones guided by judgement shaped over time. Judgement built from pattern recognition, not prediction. From experience, not certainty.

I learned to listen for quieter signals.

How people behaved when no one was watching.

How partners responded when timelines slipped.

How customers reacted when something went wrong, not when it worked.

These signals rarely appear in dashboards.

They live in conversations. In tone. In follow-through.

One of the hardest lessons was accepting that some decisions would never feel resolved. Even after choosing, doubt lingers. Results take time. Feedback arrives unevenly. You move forward without emotional closure.

That is normal.

Founders who wait to feel confident before acting often confuse confidence with comfort. Confidence grows after movement, not before it. Clarity is frequently the reward for action, not the prerequisite.

Over the years, I stopped asking if a decision was perfect.

I started asking:

Does this move us forward?

Does this preserve our integrity?

Does this keep future options open?

If the answers leaned yes, I moved.

Not quickly. Not carelessly. But deliberately.

There is a quiet discipline in making decisions without full data. It requires humility to accept what you do not know, and courage to act anyway. It also requires restraint. Knowing when a decision is reversible and when it is not.

Reversible decisions can be tested. Irreversible ones deserve more thought, not more data. More judgement.

This is something no spreadsheet teaches.

Today, I no longer chase clarity as a prerequisite. I respect it when it appears, but I do not depend on it. Entrepreneurship, at its core, is not about perfect information. It is about responsibility under uncertainty.

If there is one thing I wish younger founders understood earlier, it is this.

Uncertainty is not your enemy.

Indecision is.

The goal is not to eliminate doubt.

The goal is to build the ability to decide while carrying it.

That is where real leadership begins.