ALEX BROD.

Founder Psychology

Essays on the internal work that precedes everything else — clarity, conviction, and the decisions founders keep avoiding. For founders who sense the problem isn't the market.

Mar 23, 2026

Stop Selling Shovels, Founders: Stay in the Mine

Smart founders pivot to selling courses the moment they find traction. The psychological trap that drives this, and why the best founders refuse to leave the mine.

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Mar 20, 2026

The Telepathy Delusion

The traits that make founders successful at the start — obsession and control — are often the exact traits that choke the company's growth later. It starts with assuming your team can read your mind.

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Mar 4, 2026

The Moat of Giving a Damn

When Anthropic refused a direct order from the President and lost $200M in contracts overnight, it triggered the largest user migration in AI history. The lesson isn't about AI. It's about what founder conviction actually costs — and what it builds.

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Feb 26, 2026

Borrowed Convictions

When founders borrow the market's language instead of owning their own, everything downstream breaks. Positioning, messaging, team alignment — all of it runs on conviction. And you can't borrow that.

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