When I do triathlons, the hardest part isn’t the distance. It’s the open-water swimming.
In the pool, progress is easy to measure. Every 25 yards I hit a wall, turn around, and I know exactly how far I’ve gone. I can watch the bottom of the pool going by. I can count laps, check my pace, and see my progress in real time.
But in open water, there are no walls. No clear markers. Often, in water visibility is just a foot or two, so I can’t even see the bottom. It’s just a long stretch of water that never seems to end.
I pick a tree at the far end of the lake as my destination, but 400 yards in, it looks just as far away as when I started. I can swim for minutes and feel like I haven’t moved an inch. It’s disorienting and discouraging. I start wondering if I’m making any progress at all… or if the current’s pushing me backward.
That’s what building a company can feel like.
When you’re swimming in the open water of a startup, there are no walls every 25 yards to tell you you’re getting somewhere. Visibility is often poor, and the context is cloudy. You might be building toward an MVP, a cash-flow milestone, or a fundraising round, but those markers are months away. The distance between today and that finish line can feel infinite.
So what do you do? You move the goalposts.
One of our co-founders, Charles Jolley, says this is critical in startups. You have to create closer, (sometimes) artificial goalposts, so you can measure real progress along the way.
When I’m swimming, that might mean counting ten strokes before looking up again. The tree on the horizon won’t look closer after those ten strokes, but I know I’ve done my part. Then, I do ten more.
In a startup, it’s the same.
If your goal is to close a fundraising round, define what success looks like this week.
Maybe it’s sending 20 investor emails.
Maybe it’s getting two intro meetings.
Maybe it’s following up with everyone from last week’s calls.
Those are your strokes.
That’s how you move forward in an environment where progress is hard to see.
Because if your only goal is “get investment,” every day that doesn’t end with a wire transfer feels like failure, even if you did the work that actually gets you there. And that’s how founders burn out: by confusing lack of visible results with lack of progress.
In open water, if you keep looking up too often, you lose your rhythm and waste energy. In startups, if you only focus on the distant horizon, you lose motivation and start doubting yourself.
So create your own markers. Count your strokes. Move the goalposts.
That’s how you keep going long enough to reach the other side.