More clarity than a pitch deck after its fifth rewrite.

Today’s Loose Ends looks at why the “idea guy” myth refuses to die, how separating strategy from ego changes decision-making, and a genuinely strange invention that’s oddly revealing. Less posturing, more progress.

🧱 Why Most Startups Are Over-Engineered

There’s a strange mismatch between how startups are built and how they’re actually used.

Founders obsess over architecture, scalability, and edge cases long before any of them matter. Systems are designed for millions of users that never arrive. Complexity is justified as “future proofing.”

Most of it is theatre.

Early-stage startups don’t fail because their systems can’t scale. They fail because nobody cares enough to push them that far. Over-engineering doesn’t reduce risk — it front-loads it.

Every layer of complexity adds:

What’s interesting is that the most resilient companies often start with embarrassingly simple setups. Manual processes. Scrappy workflows. Ugly internal tools. They earn the right to optimise later.

This isn’t laziness. It’s sequencing.

The mistake isn’t building robust systems. It’s building them too early, before demand justifies the cost.

In uncertain markets, speed and adaptability beat elegance. Startups that survive aren’t the most sophisticated — they’re the least trapped.

Build for today.
Earn tomorrow.

Everything else is just premature polish.

Ingvar Kamprad built IKEA by treating cost-consciousness as a competitive advantage, not a constraint. He believed frugality sharpened thinking and forced better design.

🧠 Kamprad’s core belief:
“Waste of resources is a mortal sin at IKEA.”

💡 Why this matters for founders:

🔧 What this looks like in practice:

🛠️ Try this:
Set an aggressive cost limit on your next project. Treat it as a design input, not a hurdle. See what creativity it unlocks.

In a tangled startup, frugality isn’t about being small—it’s about being sharp. Kamprad’s lesson is clear: constraints don’t kill innovation; they focus it.

(Insight inspired by Ingvar Kamprad)

A motion-activated, wall-mounted singing fish that suddenly bursts into song when someone walks past. The Big Mouth Billy Bass is one of the internet’s longest-running novelty hits—and still catches people off guard decades later.

Completely impractical. Instantly recognisable. It’s survived multiple internet eras because surprise beats usefulness—and because nothing kills seriousness faster than a fish singing at you unprompted.

Your weekly haul of tools, links, and discoveries worth stealing.

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That’s All Folks

Before you go:

Until next time,

Connor / Loose Ends