In the beginning, most startups are like fatally ill patients. They are companies without a business.

A startup without product-market fit is like a patient without a cure – both are fighting against time.

When people are fatally ill with a deadly disease with no cure, they tend to be willing to try any potential cure, no matter how untested, experimental, or even dangerous and life-threatening it might be. After all, they are already dying, so they have nothing to lose and can therefore take immense risks.

A startup which has not yet achieved product-market fit in a market big enough to sustain the company long-term is dying. Paul Graham calls this state “default dead”. Just like a patient who knows they will die within months if a new miraculous cure doesn’t work, a startup in this phase knows that their money in the bank will only last a certain amount of time. Before that runs out, they either need to find a cure or at least a treatment that will prolong their life another year or so. Like the dying patient, they might have to choose between a potentially deadly cure or a treatment that might, at best, give them some extra time before the inevitable.

Take small doses to find the cure, but once found, don’t hold back – there’s no such thing as being half cured.

This is why startups in this phase need to take risks. If they don’t, they die. But they should always take calculated risks. Try a small dose of the untested drug and look for signs of improvement in the patient’s health. If there are none, then keep trying others. Once you think you’ve found the cure, stop all other experiments and take the full dose. There’s no way to take a half dose and become half cured, so bet everything on it and don’t hold back. You can consider revisiting your pet ideas once the patient is actually cured.