The stuck entrepreneur
Where does the fear of shipping comes from and how to fix it?
My friend Dagobert Renouf — known for his viral founder memes and for being brutally honest about failure — recently shared why he hasn’t been shipping much lately.
Since then, he’s been building again. Not by brute force, but because the story changed.
He’s an Enneagram 4 like me — so I get it.
When you’re wired like us, slop is worse than failure.
We’d rather not ship at all than ship something we don’t resonate with. We’d rather be the tragic figure than the average success story. And if we don’t feel emotionally connected to what we’re making, the drive evaporates.
It’s not laziness. It’s identity.
We want our work to say something about us. To feel alive. To feel true.
But this can lead to paralysis:
We keep refining instead of shipping.
We pick work that feels “pure” over work that works.
We avoid paths where we might succeed… but feel ordinary.
So how do we move forward?
Not by pretending to be someone else.
Not by forcing ourselves into productivity porn.
But by flipping the script:
Resonance doesn’t have to mean delay. You can build fast and care deeply. The key is choosing ideas that spark you and committing to finishing without editing the life out of them.
Being unique doesn't mean being stuck. A shipped product that doesn’t totally reflects your voice is more rare than a half-finished one stuck in your drafts.
Validation isn’t a business model. Likes and sympathy feel good. But it’s not putting food on the table. Successful entrepreneurs just build until they make it instead of worrying about validation from peers or the community.
You don’t protect your uniqueness by standing still.
You prove it by making things that couldn’t come from anyone else.
Step by step.