Why Startup Founders Need Clarity More Than Hustle

June 28, 2026 7:29 PM . 4 min read

JAKARTA, Jakartaweekly.com — Startup culture has long celebrated hustle. Startup founders are expected to wake up early, work late, sacrifice weekends, and push through exhaustion in pursuit of growth.

But according to startup advisor and angel investor Elisabeth Kurniawan, one of the biggest misconceptions in entrepreneurship is that founders fail because they don’t work hard enough.

“The biggest challenge isn’t a lack of discipline,” she says. “It’s a lack of clarity.”

Her observation aligns with new research from startup studio Wilbur Labs, which surveyed 200 U.S. technology founders earlier this year. The report found that startup failure is rarely driven by a lack of ambition. Instead, founders most often point to weak product-market fit, delayed strategic pivots, poor decision-making, and the inability to adapt quickly to changing markets.

For Kurniawan, who advises founders and invests in early-stage startups, the lesson is straightforward: being busy does not necessarily mean building a stronger business.

“Many founders mistake activity for progress,” she explains. “Everything appears to be moving—more meetings, more product features, more hiring, more marketing—but movement alone doesn’t mean the business is becoming healthier. Sometimes it’s simply becoming more complicated.”

That observation is echoed in the Wilbur Labs findings. More than half (54%) of founders said the most important lesson they learned from failure was the need to better understand product-market fit, while 42% admitted they wished they had changed their business model sooner. Meanwhile, 81% said their startups pivoted at least once from the original business idea.

As companies expand, every major decision compounds over time. Hiring, partnerships, product development, and expansion all shape a company’s future. When those decisions are driven by urgency instead of strategy, complexity often grows faster than the business itself.

“What looks like growth can actually be complexity,” Kurniawan says. “What appears to be ambition is sometimes anxiety. What feels urgent is often driven by fear.”

Many founders believe raising more capital, hiring more employees, or acquiring more customers will solve operational problems. But according to Kurniawan, scaling rarely fixes a weak business foundation.

“Scale doesn’t fix weak foundations,” she says. “It exposes them.”

The Wilbur Labs research supports that perspective. Only 25% of founders identified running out of money as the primary reason their startup struggled, while product issues, changing market conditions, and technology challenges ranked significantly higher. The findings suggest that strategic clarity often matters more than access to funding.

The challenge extends beyond startups.

Kurniawan believes professionals often continue relying on behaviors that helped them succeed earlier in their careers, even after those same habits become obstacles to future growth.

A founder who built a company through relentless hustle may respond to every challenge by simply working harder. A leader who succeeded through tight control may struggle to delegate. High performers who relied on pressure may continue believing pressure is the only path to results.

Eventually, however, the strategy that created early success becomes the barrier to the next stage of growth.

Rather than measuring success by the number of hours worked, Kurniawan encourages entrepreneurs to focus on improving the quality of their thinking.

“The quality of a business is largely determined by the quality of decisions repeated over time,” she says. “How leaders evaluate opportunities, respond to uncertainty, maintain standards, and choose what to ignore often matters more than how busy they appear.”

That message may be particularly relevant today. According to the Wilbur Labs survey, 90% of founders experienced stress or burnout severe enough to consider quitting, while 87% said entrepreneurship was lonelier than they expected. Yet despite those pressures, 81% of founders whose startups failed said they would launch another company.

For Kurniawan, resilience remains essential—but resilience without direction is costly.

The founders who build lasting companies, she says, are not necessarily the loudest voices in the startup ecosystem or the busiest people in the room. They are often those who remain calm during uncertainty, think deliberately, and know which opportunities deserve their attention.

“They know what truly matters,” she says. “And equally important, they know what doesn’t.”

As artificial intelligence, economic uncertainty, and rapid technological change continue reshaping industries, Kurniawan believes clarity will become an even greater competitive advantage than speed.

“The older I get, the less I admire hustle for its own sake,” she says. “I admire clarity. Clarity leads to better decisions. Better decisions create stronger foundations. And strong foundations are what allow ambition to survive long enough to become something meaningful.”