This is a concept I learned first from Jocko Willinkās podcast, and something Iāve gradually come to learn describes the essence of iterating in the 0-1 phase of a startup
In hindsight everything in startup land is clear. Disappearing photos are addicting. The internet has network effects. Advertising is a billion dollar business model. People will pay to get into strangersā houses and cars.
When time moves forward, in the early days, nothing is clear. As founders, our priority is to put the pieces together and see the landscape, find the next shortest hill, and rally the team to sprint there.
But this doesnāt account for the feeling of chaos and uncertainty in our heads. Until I found the fog of war.
The āfog of warā describes the sense of confusion created in oneās mind when subjected to the chaos of combat. Imperfect information, decisions that need to be made, and a sense of limited time brew into a perfect storm. The feeling that at any point, you can be āproven wrongā and your current ideas is one of the 5 underlying fears that drive founders to act. Itās analogous to the feeling a marine has of being shot at at all times on the battlefield.
strangely, amidst this chaos, I learned, experienced marines and green berets do nothing but crack jokes. with bullets wizzing by them.
one of the best ways to deal with the fog of war confusion (for 0-1 founders) is to sit in the chaos. make jokes. flip quarters. point fingers and laugh at the absurdity. if nothing, itās useful for understanding why you donāt have as much clarity as your peers at the next stage. or why most existing products we use seem obvious. those founders overcame the fog, and you need to too.