TL;DR - Early-stage startups run on conviction. A CEO who radiates certainty turns rough ideas into believers, believers into runway, and runway into time for the numbers to catch up. Guard that spark.

CEO Conviction: the real unit of survival

Smart calls and lucky breaks help. Belief pays the bills. Your job is to grow the pool of believers (employees, investors, lighthouse customers) before skeptics crowd them out.

The baseline frame

That 2 × 2 tells you if the move was smart, lucky, or a face-plant. It is tidy. Startups are not.

Add conviction. Watch the grid flip

Low conviction cools every square. High conviction warms them. Same logic. Different vote totals.

Anecdote: the feature that killed the buzz

1. CEO and designer riff on a wild idea. CEO leaves the room buzzing.
2. I skip the meeting. Later I shred the idea. Designer sides with me.
3. We build the “better” version. CEO sees it. Energy falls to zero.

He agrees to ship it “to prove us right,” but no one can sell it. Believers lost. Lesson learned: a cleaner feature that drains conviction usually costs more than it saves.

Tough questions teams actually ask

“Isn’t this just the HiPPO effect?”

In big companies HiPPO kills data-driven work. In a seed-stage startup the greater threat is running out of believers before data appears. Conviction buys runway.

“Are we just placating ego?”

You are protecting the fuel that brings trials, cheques, and hires. Lose the fuel and the smarter roadmap never ships.

“What if the idea is truly wrong?”

Keep the energising core. Trim the riskiest edge. Prototype fast. Preserve belief and shrink blast radius.

“When do we push back hard?”

Only on legal, ethical, or runway-cliff issues. Everything else bends to keep believers on board.

Operator playbook

• Show up or yield the wheel. If you skip the hype meeting, those who were there drive the push-through.
• Capture the spark. Write down the CEO’s “this is it” line and name a steward.
• Prototype in public. Share mocks or Looms so conviction stays topped up while you de-risk.
• Translate truth into hype. Frame concerns as “bigger upside if we nail X,” not “reasons we will fail.”
• Flag hard stops early. Legal, ethics, or runway cliffs override conviction. Everything else flexes.

Takeaway

Good decisions and good outcomes still matter. They are not the whole game. Track CEO conviction and protect it. When belief runs high, everything else gets easier. When it runs low, even the smartest roadmap dies in draft.