Charles HudsonFounder and Managing Partner, Precursor Ventures

Do Founders Need to Suffer?

8 Jun 2025 · 1 min

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Charles Hudson argues that outcomes matter more than whether founders followed specific advice and emphasizes the importance of trusting instincts as a first-time founder. He contrasts an earlier era—when limited content forced founders to rely on personal judgment—with today’s abundance of conflicting opinions, and asserts founders are not meant to ‘suffer’ unnecessarily though hard work is inevitable.

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So the moral of the story is it's the outcome that matters, not whether you listen to my advice or kind of how you got there. Working on trusting your instincts as a first time founder is a really important skill. And I think the irony is that in the olden days when I started Inventure, there was a lot less content. So the only way to get perspective was to go talk to other people. So you kind of were forced to follow your instincts more often. And now on any topic, you can find 10 or 15 really smart people arguing both sides of the same issue. What are you supposed to do as a founder? So I think that's one second. I tell people all the time, you're not meant to suffer for your startup. You will have times where you work really hard. You will.