Mindset

Martijn Verbove@verboveMindset · #3

The uncomfortable truth: your skills are a scarcity that no longer exist. For decades, the deal was simple: Learn the skill. Get the credential. Earn the premium. AI just nuked the premium. Not because skill is worthless, but because execution is no longer scarce. It’s abundant. So what becomes valuable? Imagination. The ability to see something that does not exist yet. And focus. Focus is the feedback loop where reality sharpens your idea while you build it. Skill is converting what’s in your head into reality. But the moment you start building, the idea changes. Your imagination refines. That refinement is focus. In an AI world, more people can do the work. Fewer people can imagine the right thing, then stay with it long enough to make it real. Imagination + focus is the new moat.

Skill economics framework: imagination + focus

Martijn Verbove@verboveMindset · #4

'Passion' is a complete myth. And no one wants to say it out loud. I realized this after years of watching founders chase it: "Find what you love" // "Follow your passion" It never felt like real advice. Now I know why. Because it's backwards. You don't find passion and then build something. You build something meaningful and passion follows. Startups are deeply non-linear. A tiny set of decisions creates almost all the outcomes. For example: The founder grinding 80-hour weeks on the wrong idea burns out in silence. Meanwhile, someone ships a focused tool in a weekend, finds a real pain point, and compounds quietly for years. Who's working smarter? If passion was something you 'found', the most enthusiastic people would win. The hobbyists and the dreamers would be running the companies shaping the world. Instead, it's the opposite. Detached builders who shipped without permission made the tools you rely on. Pragmatic weirdos who ignored the rules built the platforms you post to. The best founders I know didn't follow passion - they followed signal. The sharp ones always saw through the 'find your passion' story. Because passion is an EFFECT, not a cause. You don't manufacture it. It emerges when the work compounds, when users respond, when the mission gets real. The indie hacker who can't stop building his tool - he's not 'grinding'. He's in flow. The mission is pulling him forward. Effort is a natural byproduct of aligned work. This is why you have to choose your problem with INTENTION. Because once you find real traction on something that matters, you'll stop waiting to feel ready. Let the problem pull you. Build the thing.

Passion follows building; effect not cause

Martijn Verbove@verboveMindset · #5

highest ROI lifehack I've used recently: switch your phone to grayscale → avoids attention grabbing apps keep one page only by "removing from homescreen" → stops doom swipping thank me later

Teaches concrete reusable productivity lifehacks

Martijn Verbove@verboveMindset · #6

Stop trying to predict which AI skills will matter in 3 years. Nobody knows. The space is moving too fast to plan that far ahead. What you actually need is the ability to pick up any tool and get productive with it fast. That only happens by building real things. Your own agent. Your own workflow. Your own product: - I built to Gymlab to rethink how my fitness plan gets built. - We built Doczen around issues we encountered ourselves. Then put it in front of people. Does it solve a real problem or not? That pressure forces you to learn what matters. Everything connects to something real, which means you stop depending on a single platform, a single skill, or a single employer who will cut you the moment something cheaper ships.

Teaches building real things as best way to learn AI skills

Martijn Verbove@verboveMindset · #7

You become a good founder by understanding what it's like to have no users. You become a good builder by understanding what it's like to ship something nobody wants. You do not start out as a visionary. You start as someone who was just wrong less often over time.

Teaches founder development through failure and iteration

Martijn Verbove@verboveMindset · #8

Startups make a lot more sense once you stop confidently repeating things you haven't actually validated yourself. But founders are desperate to sound like they've done the work, so they treat "I read a thread about it" as equivalent to knowing something.

Insight about validating vs. assuming knowledge from reading

Martijn Verbove@verboveMindset · #9

As someone who has moved between struggling founder and one with real traction, you learn that momentum doesn't build gradually - it collapses into a single inflection point. For a long time, nothing moves. Then a few signals here and there. At the peak, inbound becomes relentless and compounding. I'm not saying I'm there permanently - I'm not. But once you've operated at that level for any stretch of time, you're exposed to a completely different game. Hard to explain to anyone who hasn't crossed that threshold. It's like the market unconsciously rewards you just for showing up with the right thing at the right time.

Explains momentum isn't gradual; describes inflection point pattern

Martijn Verbove@verboveMindset · #10

If you are choosing between the proven path and the unproven one, take the unproven one. Because if the proven path were the better path, someone else would have already won on it.

Reusable principle: choose unproven path when proven path exists