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Love the problem, not the swords
I have a talent that is also a trap. I can make up product ideas all day long.
On September 29, 2026, I sat down and wrote a note to myself about it. One line from that note keeps coming back to me: “I need to love the problem and think about truly defeating him, not coming up with swords and falling in love with the swords.” This piece is about what that line means, where the idea comes from, and the small, boring check I now run before I let myself build anything.
Two ways to start. Only one of them ends with people who were already waiting.
Why are sudden startup ideas a red flag?
A sudden idea is a red flag because it comes from your head, not from your life. It feels like insight, but nothing has tested it yet. If you cannot trace it back to a problem you hit yourself, again and again, and talked about many times before the idea showed up, you are probably holding a sword with no enemy in front of it.
Here is my honest confession. “Random ideas and imaginable possibilities are easy for me to generate.” I build with AI tools, so the distance between “what if” and a working demo is a weekend. That sounds like a superpower. In practice it means I can fall in love with a dozen swords a month, and each one feels just as sharp as the last.
