Stop talking, start doing

Momentum changes everything. In the early stages of building a company, your greatest advantage isn’t perfect strategy or flawless execution – it’s speed. While established companies need careful planning because their decisions affect thousands of customers and employees, startups need something entirely different. We need forward motion more than we need perfection.

At Twine, we’ve embraced a simple rule: when in doubt, do something. Our best breakthroughs rarely emerged from extended planning sessions or perfectly crafted strategies. They came from shipping that feature we weren’t quite sure about, talking to one more customer, or fixing those bugs within 24 hours. Even when these actions weren’t perfectly aligned with our master plan, they taught us something far more valuable: the simple act of doing creates more clarity than thinking ever could.

Learning through action

Let me share some real examples from our journey building Twine that illustrate this principle in action.

Early on, we built our own call bot for extracting intelligence from customer conversations. The team debated extensively about whether to prioritize this versus focusing on integrations with existing call recording platforms. Rather than getting stuck in analysis paralysis, we decided to build it and see what happened. Turns out we were both right and wrong – while most customers prefer integrations, we discovered specific segments and personas who absolutely love using our call bot. Not the use case we imagined, but by building it, we uncovered valuable insights and created an asset that serves a distinct market need.

Sometimes doing something means knowing when to undo it too. We shipped a roadmap feature because we assumed customers would want to manage their features within Twine. The market quickly told us we were wrong – it only confused people about our core value proposition. Instead of defending our decision or slowly phasing it out, we unshipped it. Fast decision, quick reversal, valuable learning.

When GDPR compliance emerged as a crucial blocker for our global customers, we could have spent weeks debating the perfect time to tackle it. Instead, the entire team rallied around getting it done immediately. No committees, no extended planning sessions, just focused action toward a clear goal. This approach not only solved an immediate customer need but also demonstrated our ability to move quickly on critical issues.

Our website and positioning evolve constantly. In the early stages of a company, you’re learning new things about your market and customers every single week. Rather than getting stuck in endless debates about the perfect messaging, we make incremental improvements based on what we learn. Our philosophy is simple: it will never be perfect, but it must get better every week.

Why this matters

The cost of being wrong in an early-stage startup is almost always lower than the cost of not moving forward as fast as possible. Each action, whether successful or not, generates real data and insights that thinking alone never could. It keeps energy high, builds momentum, and can become a genuine competitive advantage.

Now, this isn’t about being reckless. Rather it’s about recognizing that in the early stages the perfect plan executed too late is worth far less than an imperfect action taken at the right time. Every feature shipped, customer conversation had, or problem solved adds to your understanding in ways that theoretical discussions never could.

Making it work

Here’s how we put this into practice:

1. Build momentum by having everyone ship something meaningful every day
2. Celebrate quick reversals of decisions that aren’t working
3. Give everyone the agency to make decisions with a fraction of the information you wish you had
4. Focus on learning through doing and have no recurring planning meetings

The magic happens when your team embraces this mindset collectively. Suddenly, energy shifts from debating what might work to learning what actually does. The focus moves from perfect plans to perfect execution of imperfect plans. Early-stage startups don’t die from making wrong decisions, they die from not making enough decisions fast enough. So next time you find yourself in an extended debate about the perfect approach, remember this: stop talking, start doing. The clarity you seek is on the other side of action, not analysis.