In the startup world — and life in general — we often romanticize the future. It gives us the emotional fuel to start something somewhere. It inspires hope and helps people see beyond the present. Vision of future creates a magnetic North Star which can show direction to everyone. It drives Long-Term Thinking.
In the startup world, while romanticizing the future, we sketch beautiful roadmaps, build polished decks, and share growth projections that rise in smooth, upward curves. On paper, everything looks elegant, predictable — like a straight line from point A to point B. As an angel investor, I have seen numerous pitch decks, beautifully created in pleasant colours and predictable line graphs supported with equally deep explanations as to how the ‘future’ would unfold.
I admire these youngsters for their thought of the future as they clearly put out.
The real path of growth is anything but linear!
Mathematically speaking, straight line may be an ‘open eye’ or a ‘distant’ view of a curved graph. The moment you use a highly magnifying glass, the curves start appearing in the straight line. The more powerful is the magnifier, bigger and uneven are the curves. In addition to the magnifier, the straight line is also a function of ‘time period’. And there can be infinite number of straight lines in a graph.
In the startup parlance, every step, every thought, every beat, and every moment will add to the curves of the straight line. These curves cannot be brought to the power point presentations or pitch decks but can be viewed through the ‘mental lens’.
Further, these curves are about delays that test your patience, false starts that force reinvention, and pivots that challenge your original assumptions. Customers reject. Funding stalls. Teams evolve and dissolve. Markets shift. What looked like a straight sprint becomes a winding, uphill trek.
This is the uneven path — not a flaw in the journey, but the nature of it.
It’s in this space that dreams are tested, intentions are refined and Integrity is fortified — not in moments of ease, but in the quiet persistence through uncertainty. It’s here that clarity emerges, not from perfect plans, but from the willingness to adapt, to listen, and to stay aligned with purpose even when the path ahead is unclear.
Straight lines are comforting illusions. They offer a sense of control, of clarity. They soothe our need for predictability in an unpredictable world. But growth lives in the messy, the nonlinear, and the unplanned. It thrives in detours, in breakdowns that become breakthroughs, in moments that defy the roadmap. Real progress rarely announces itself with certainty — it reveals itself in hindsight, shaped by resilience, not perfection.
Real growth doesn’t follow those straight lines. It stumbles. It circles back. It pauses, then surges forward when least expected.
Salute to all the resilient founders out there who tried, adapted and eventually thrived!
