If you’re building a startup and it’s not working, read this.

Building a startup feels amazing.
Until it doesn’t.

Some days, you’re on fire.
You get a new idea, talk to an excited user, finally fix that onboarding bug that was killing conversions.

Other days, you sit in front of your laptop, stare at the analytics dashboard, and wonder if you should just go get a job.

That’s the truth nobody talks about.

Before I started my design studio Grauberg, I founded a startup, raised 6-figures in VC money and built the product from scratch (multiple times haha)

So instead of giving you a playbook today, I want to give you something more important:

5 hard truths that helped me survive the tough days.

If you’re stuck right now; I hope this helps you stay in the game.

1. Nobody cares about your product.

At least not yet.

You spent months designing the perfect MVP. You posted your launch on LinkedIn. You got 17 likes.

You feel like screaming: “But this is actually good!”

I’ve been there. So have most founders.

Not because your product is bad, but because nobody has time. Attention is earned, not given.

We think: “If I build something great, people will come.”

The truth? People don’t come. You have to drag them in with stories, with value, with presence.

👉 Start sharing your journey. Not to go viral, but to get real feedback.

Building in public isn’t just marketing; it’s survival.

2. Validation is not traction.

You ran interviews.
You got nods.
You were told: “That sounds super useful!”

And yet… no one signs up. Or they sign up, poke around once, and ghost you.

A common phrase I heard in sales calls was “Oh that sounds cool, let me loop in my colleague”.

That’s not traction. That’s politeness.

Why? Because humans are bad at predicting what they’ll actually use. They’re even worse at saying “no” in a nice way.

👉 Traction means someone pays you, uses your thing, and tells someone else about it.

Everything else is noise.

Personal note:

As an angel investor, I recently had a call with a founder who had 10.000+ waitlist members for their product.

It’s impressive, and you definitely know how to move people, but there is no sign your product will actually solve their problem.

Nothing for me.

3. You will want to quit. Often.

Nobody talks about this part, but it’s everywhere.

You launch. You wait.

And nothing happens.

No growth, no traffic, no dopamine hit.

That’s when the doubts creep in.

“Am I wasting my time?”

“Am I just bad at this?”

You’re not.

You’re just doing something hard. That’s how it feels.

In fact, founder mental health is one of the biggest predictors of startup failure, not because founders aren’t smart enough, but because they burn out before they figure it out.

👉 Don’t quit on a bad day.

Get some sleep. Talk to a friend.

Decide tomorrow.

4. Speed is defined by your feedback loops.

It’s not how fast you code.

It’s how fast you learn.

You can ship 10 features in 2 weeks, but if nobody uses them, you’ve just wasted time.

Meanwhile, another founder ships one feature, shows it to 3 users the same day, and immediately knows what to fix.

👉 Speed = feedback, not output.

The tighter your loop between idea → launch → reaction → iteration, the faster you’ll build something people actually want.

If you’re not talking to users or looking at real behavior within 24–48h of launching something…

you’re not moving fast.

You’re just busy.

The same counts for internal progress as well.

A daily standup is not just to update your team, it’s to stay accountable, and make progress every week. There is nothing worse than saying “no updates from me”, while the rest of the team made progress.

5. You don’t need 10,000 users. You need 10 who care.

You see other startups posting screenshots:

“Just hit 20k signups!”

“$100k MRR in 6 months!”

It messes with your head.

But here’s the truth: those numbers don’t matter, unless the users actually care.

In the early days, your only job is to find 5–10 users who love your product so much they’d be sad if it disappeared.

Not users who “kinda like it”.

Not users who “are trying it out.”

Real ones.

👉 Talk to them. Watch them use the product.

Ask what they’d do if you shut it down tomorrow.

If the answer is “meh”, you’ve got work to do.

If the answer is “please don’t”, you’ve found gold.

Final thoughts

I wrote this newsletter because I needed to hear this stuff myself.

Most of us don’t quit because our product is bad.

We quit because it’s lonely. It’s slow. It feels like nobody cares.

But if you’re reading this - and still trying - you’re already ahead of 95% of people.

Keep going.

Refocus.

Talk to real humans.

Ship something small.

And then… ship again.

You don’t have to go viral. You just have to not give up.

👉 Like this? I write Design Led to help founders build better products, and stay sane doing it.

And if this resonated, reply and let me know — I read every message.

– Nik