'Fast' is the most overused adjective in startups today and it has been used to describe just about everything that startups do: move fast, fail fast, hire fast, fire fast, get big fast, etc.

Speed by itself is a fine quality but in the context of startups "fast" really means "go fast all the time". Unfortunately, all that speed comes at a tremendous cost. I'm proposing that "constant high-energy activity" isn't the most desirable quality for startups. In fact, it's opposite (laziness) is actually much more preferable.

Let's start by observing nature and specifically those animals that sit on top of the food chain. These animals (e.g. lions) all share the same qualities: predatory, strong, fast. However, the animals at the top of the food chain are also among the laziest in the entire animal kingdom. They understand that their survival depends on their ability to conserve energy until they spot an opportunity to kill. Only then do they transition into an extremely high-energy state and relentlessly pursue their prey.

What does this mean for startups? Don't spend any more energy than is absolutely necessary. Especially don't fritter away energy doing things that have no impact on customers just because that's what startups are expected to do. For example, raising money, overengineering infrastructure, and writing too much code in advance of customer feedback are all things that many startups think they should be doing but can consume great amounts of energy and distract from things that actually matter to customers.

The problem with doing anything fast is that speed isn't free. Spending massive amounts of energy just to go fast when the objective isn't clear means that you won't be able to accelerate when your prey is in sight. True predators understand that their energy levels are finite and failing to catch their prey just leaves them that much more exhausted and close to starvation.