Everyone wants to build a unicorn.
A billion-dollar valuation.
A massive funding round.
A glamorous TechCrunch headline.
An office somewhere in San Francisco with glass walls and free coffee.
But after years of working with founders across different countries, industries, and startup stages, I’ve noticed something surprising:
The smartest founders I know are not trying to build unicorns.
They are building profitable systems.
And honestly, that realization changed the way I look at startups forever.
Over the past 8 years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with startup founders and teams across places like United Arab Emirates, Qatar, the United Kingdom, and founders connected to circles in San Francisco where startup conversations almost feel like a different language entirely.
Different markets.
Different cultures.
Different economies.
But the same obsession kept showing up everywhere:
“Can this become a unicorn?”
At some point, I started noticing something else.
The founders making the most noise online were not always the ones building the strongest companies.
And the founders building the strongest companies were usually too busy serving customers to impress the internet.
I’ve worked on products for founders chasing venture capital.
I’ve also worked on products for founders quietly generating revenue every month without posting motivational threads every morning.
Guess which group slept better.
The second one.
Because when your business makes money consistently, your decisions become calmer.
You stop building for validation.
You stop chasing trends.
You stop trying to look successful.
You focus on solving problems.
That’s where real businesses are born.
A lot of founders today are accidentally building startup theatre instead of companies.
They optimize for:
- announcements
- aesthetics
- funding
- “stealth mode”
- hype
- impressions
- startup vocabulary
Meanwhile, the boring founders are:
- talking to users
- improving retention
- fixing onboarding
- increasing conversion
- building distribution
- collecting payments
One group looks bigger online.
The other group survives longer.
Working on my own US/Canada-focused SaaS products changed my perspective even more.
When you’re building products yourself, especially without massive funding behind you, reality hits quickly.
Nobody cares about your stack.
Nobody cares how clean your architecture is.
Nobody cares how revolutionary your idea sounds.
People care about one thing:
“Does this solve my problem enough for me to pay for it?”
That single question destroys a lot of founder fantasies.
One of the biggest misconceptions in startup culture is that scale automatically means success.
It doesn’t.
Some founders are running stressful companies with:
- huge burn rates
- investor pressure
- unstable operations
- unhealthy growth expectations
While another founder somewhere is quietly running a profitable SaaS making consistent monthly revenue with a tiny team and complete freedom.
One gets headlines.
The other gets peace.
I think many young founders have been conditioned to believe that smaller businesses are somehow “less ambitious.”
I disagree completely.
Building a sustainable company in today’s world is one of the hardest things anyone can do.
Especially if you’re building from countries where:
- infrastructure is unstable
- funding is limited
- opportunities are uneven
- access is harder
That requires real execution.
The founders I respect the most today usually think differently.
They ask:
- How fast can we validate?
- Can this business survive without funding?
- Is this solving a painful problem?
- Can we own distribution?
- Can this generate cash flow early?
- Can this run lean?
Not:
- “How fast can we raise?”
- “How do we look bigger?”
- “How do we sound like Silicon Valley?”
Ironically, many unicorns started by focusing on usefulness first, not valuation.
They became massive because users genuinely needed them.
Not because the founders forced the narrative.
And I think that’s the lesson many founders are missing today.
The goal should not be to look like a unicorn.
The goal should be to build something so useful that growth becomes unavoidable.
As founders, especially younger founders, we need to normalize building:
- profitable businesses
- niche products
- sustainable SaaS companies
- infrastructure tools
- boring systems that print money
- products with real users
- companies with longevity
Not every company needs to become a billion-dollar startup.
But every founder should aim to build something real.
Because at the end of the day, revenue is louder than aesthetics.
And usefulness will always outlive hype.
Sayonara.