If You Compromise Once, You'll Do It Again
The Best Business Ideas Start With Pain. And Build With People You Like.
Every Sunday, I share 3 short stories with 7,000+ founders and CXOs about what I’m learning from business and life.
Here are this weeks insights:
If You Compromise Once, You’ll Do It Again.
The Best Business Ideas Start With Pain
Build With People You Like
You can find all past editions here. Let’s dive in 👇
(1) If you compromise once, you’ll do it again.
Aamir Khan would go home and cry every night. He hated the movies that he was working on.
After his first hit, the next nine flopped.
So he made himself a promise. He wouldn’t sign a film unless he liked all three:
The script
The director
The producer
It was at this low point that Mahesh Bhatt, then a rising director, offered him a film. It was the chance to turn things around.
But Aamir didn’t like the script.
“I felt like I was sinking in quicksand. And someone had extended a hand. But taking it would mean breaking a promise I made to myself.”
He said no.
Six months later, Bhatt returned with a script Aamir liked. And that became their film together.
Had Aamir compromised then, the rest of his career would have been a compromise. He stuck to his promise to himself. And that’s why he became who he is - one of the most successful actors in India.
This reminded me of a time early in my career when I walked away from a $250,000 pay packet. I stayed true to my values. And that has kept me on the right path ever since.
Don’t compromise, especially when it is hardest not to!
(2) The Best Business Ideas Start With Pain
I’ve stopped trusting business ideas that come from spreadsheets.
They look great on paper. But real businesses, the ones that last, don’t start with a formula.
They start with pain.
Take ButcherBox.
A $600 million-a-year company didn’t begin with a D2C playbook.
It started because Mike Salguero’s wife had an autoimmune disorder.
They were following elimination diets, but grass-fed beef was impossible to find.
So Mike got obsessed.
He tracked down a farmer in a parking lot.
Started buying meat in trash bags.
Had too much, began selling it to friends.
One of them said, “This would be easier if it came to my house.”
That became ButcherBox.
No pitch deck. No market map. Just a personal problem, deeply felt.
It reminded me of how I started Happy Ratio.
Not with a business plan, but with a question that wouldn’t leave me alone.
Why is it so hard to eat clean in India when you’re busy?
So I built what I needed. A complete meal that took zero effort.
That’s it. That was the start.
And the data backs this up.
A CB Insights analysis of startup post-mortems found that 70 percent of unicorn founders say their ideas came from personal frustration. Not from market research or spreadsheets.
ButcherBox. Airbnb. Uber. All built from pain.
No spreadsheet would have predicted that.
Great businesses don’t follow trends. They fix problems that matter.
The best ones fix the problem that keeps showing up in your own life.
What’s something that annoys you more than it should?
Start there. That’s where the gold is.
(3) Build With People You Like
I don’t care how smart someone is—if I wouldn’t want to go on a walk with them, I probably don’t want to build with them.
This is another lesson I pulled from Mike Salguero, founder of ButcherBox, when he was talking about his first startup failure.
He scaled his business from $2,500/month to $200,000/month.
He had a team who hacked through the jungle with him.
But then he started listening too closely to investors.
First they said the tech team wasn’t good enough.
Then it was the marketing team.
Then the product team.
One by one, he let them go.
He replaced them with polished resumes and perfect LinkedIn profiles.
But something changed.
“I lost my team. And I lost myself.”
He didn’t want to go to work anymore.
That line stuck with me.
In the early days of Happy Ratio, I had a chance to bring in a few “big names.”
On paper, they were perfect. But the term sheet made me feel uncomfortable.
I didn’t want to get to a point where I was being told who to work with—or how to work.
So I walked away.
Today, I build with people I like.
People I trust. People I’d go on a weekend trip with.
We still have disagreements. But we don’t stop walking.
Because when you’re in the trenches, you don’t need stars.
You need people who will go the distance with you.
👋 I’m Harsh. I build businesses and write about what I learn. If you’re curious about what I’m building—or think we might work well together—here’s where I spend most of my time:
Ideals VDR - We help professionals to collaborate over sensitive data and run critical business transactions, such as M&A, smoothly.
Happy Ratio - Delicious, nutritious foods and drinks designed for busy lives. No fuss, just health made simple.
Marcellus Investment Managers - Where my personal investments grow. Their philosophy of investing in clean, honest, cash flow-positive businesses aligns with my approach.
Harsh Batra (LinkedIn)