Why Speed Is the Most Expensive Addiction in Early Product Building
- Tushar
- Dec 11
- 4 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
Most early teams do not fail because they move slow. They fail because they move fast in the wrong direction, burn through conviction, cash, and clarity… and then realise too late that the foundation they built on speed was never built on truth.
I learnt this the hard way - both while building a D2C brand and while working with early-stage teams as a PM. Every time something collapsed, speed looked like the villain. But it wasn’t speed. It was an unexamined speed.
Table of Contents
The moment I learnt speed can quietly bankrupt you
When I launched the D2C arm of my marketplace business, I was convinced that speed was the master key. The thinking was simple:
launch fast
acquire users fast
optimise fast
scale fast
Every article online was pushing the same narrative: “Move quickly. Break things. Iterate.” And so I did.
I launched quickly.
I ran ads quickly.
I built flows quickly.
I fixed issues quickly.
But here’s what also happened quickly:
the CAC skyrocketed
traffic came but never stuck
repeat purchases refused to grow
margins began shrinking every week
and I realised that I had built a system faster than I had understood it
The most painful discovery: I was optimising something users didn’t even want from me. Speed didn’t harm me. It only amplified what I had misunderstood.
That was the day I learnt the most important rule of zero-to-one: Speed magnifies truth. If your assumptions are wrong, speed magnifies the damage.
Why founders and PMs get addicted to speed
Speed gives an illusion of progress. It feels productive. It feels powerful. It feels like you are “building”. But the reality is far simpler: Speed is addictive because it helps you avoid thinking.
When founders or early PMs move too fast, it is usually because:
silence feels uncomfortable
user ambiguity feels threatening
waiting feels like losing
research feels slow
design feels slow
feedback feels slow
and “shipping something” feels like winning
But in zero-to-one, fast shipping is not victory. Fast shipping is just faster exposure to your blind spots.
Speed becomes expensive when the truth arrives late
Not every cost shows up immediately. Some show up quietly, slowly, and suddenly all at once. The real cost of moving too fast is paid in the form of:
rebuilding what shouldn’t have been built
undoing what you rushed
repairing what you didn’t understand
realigning teams whose work was based on wrong assumptions
disappointing early users who needed trust, not features
losing months of momentum because something critical was skipped
And the most dangerous cost: You start believing the problem is execution. Even when the problem was foundation.
A simple rule that changed how I build products
Through my own failures and through working with founders, I formed a simple rule:
If the cost of being wrong is high, the speed must be slow.
If the cost of being wrong is low, the speed can be fast.
This became my internal compass. When I applied this lens, my clarity improved dramatically and it led to a mental model I now use with every founder.
The Cost of Correction Test
Before building anything, ask yourself three questions:
If I’m wrong, how expensive will correcting this be?
If correction affects architecture, trust, user data, fulfilment, or money - slow down.
How many people will be affected if this goes wrong?
If the answer is “a lot”, that is not a speed zone.
What is the smallest version of this idea that still reveals user truth?
This prevents overbuilding and pushes you toward a low-risk experiment instead of a fast mistake.
Most early teams use speed to hide uncertainty. The Cost of Correction Test forces you to confront uncertainty before building anything.
The difference between healthy speed and harmful speed
Healthy speed
experiments, not features
small loops, not large bets
conversations, not assumptions
hypothesis testing, not roadmaps
learning velocity, not shipping velocity
Harmful speed
building before understanding
designing before validating
shipping before scoping
scaling before proving
acquiring users before knowing retention drivers
The irony is simple: Healthy speed looks slower at the beginning but compounds massively. Harmful speed looks fast at the beginning but collapses massively.
A lived experience: marketplace discoveries don’t obey speed
When I built a fast-growing marketplace business, I learnt that speed rarely moves the market. Users moved according to:
trust
repeat experience
relevance
perceived value
risk tolerance
There is no feature you can ship fast enough to change how humans behave. What you can do is understand them deeply enough. And that takes time.
Speed should not be your Goal
Speed is not the goal. Compounding is. Every early-stage idea hits a point where speed feels like the right answer. But in reality, the real lever is sequence. If you build in the wrong sequence (phases), then speed multiplies damage. Build in the right sequence and speed multiplies value.
The goal is not to move fast. The goal is to move correctly, and then increase speed once the foundations are stable. True zero-to-one products become “fast” only after they become “right”.
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