Elad Gil: “Things That Work Tend to Work Pretty Fast”!

Startup advice often celebrates persistence.

Founders are told to keep grinding, ignore rejection, and stay committed no matter how long success takes. The message sounds inspiring: work hard enough for long enough, and eventually the company will succeed.

Elad Gil believes that advice can be misleading.

“There’s a bit of a myth in Silicon Valley that you should keep grinding no matter what and it’s just about perseverance.”

Persistence is useful when customers are showing genuine interest. But continuing to push the same product toward an indifferent market is not always determination. Sometimes, it means overlooking what the market is trying to tell you.

According to Gil, startups that are going to work often show encouraging signs relatively early.

“In general, things that work tend to work pretty fast, and usually that’s within the first year of launch.”

This does not mean a startup must become profitable, raise millions of dollars, or dominate its market within twelve months. It means founders should begin seeing evidence that people care.

For founders across the startup ecosystem in Canada, Gil’s advice offers an important distinction: do not measure progress only by how hard your team is working. Look for signs that customers are pulling the product forward.

Persistence Is Not the Same as Progress

Resilience is necessary when building a company.

Every founder will encounter setbacks, product issues, investor rejections, hiring challenges, and periods of uncertainty. A startup team that gives up whenever something becomes difficult is unlikely to build anything meaningful.

However, there is a difference between working through challenges and repeatedly pursuing an idea that has shown little evidence of demand.

A team can spend years adding features, redesigning its website, adjusting its pricing, and increasing its marketing budget. Those activities may create the appearance of progress without changing the most important fact: customers still do not care enough.

Hard work cannot compensate for the absence of a meaningful problem.

Instead of asking only, “Can we keep going?” founders should ask:

What evidence do we have that continuing in this direction will lead somewhere?

That question changes the conversation. It moves the focus away from effort and toward customer behaviour.

What Does It Mean for a Startup to “Work Fast”?

Gil’s point is not that startup success should be immediate or easy.

Most companies take years to mature. Early products are often incomplete, revenue may be limited, and the team may still be learning who its ideal customers are.

But when a startup is beginning to work, something usually feels different.

Customers return without being repeatedly reminded. They recommend the product to others. They ask for access, send detailed feedback, request new features, or become frustrated when the product is unavailable.

There is a sense of pull.

In a struggling startup, every customer must be persuaded to try the product. Every sale requires a long explanation, and many users disappear shortly after signing up.

In a promising startup, users begin pulling the product from the company. Even when the experience is imperfect, they continue coming back because the underlying value is strong.

Early traction does not guarantee long-term success. But it gives founders a reason to believe they are solving a problem that matters.

Five Years of Grinding Usually Includes a Change in Direction

There are famous stories of companies that took many years to become successful.

These examples are often used to support the idea that founders should never give up. But Gil points out that companies that finally succeed after five years frequently did not spend those years pursuing the exact same idea.

They changed direction.

The company may have entered a different market, targeted a new customer, adjusted its business model, or built a very different product.

The startup that eventually succeeded was often not the same startup that originally launched.

That leads to a more useful interpretation of perseverance.

The lesson is not necessarily:

Keep doing the same thing until it works.

It may be:

Keep learning until you find something that works.

Founders should remain committed to creating value, but they do not need to remain permanently committed to their first idea.

Why Small Pivots Can Trap Founders

When a startup recognizes that its product is not working, the team may decide to pivot.

However, Gil believes many founders pivot too narrowly.

“When people pivot, they tend to pivot locally. They don’t tend to pivot across markets.”

A local pivot keeps most of the original assumptions intact.

The startup may target a slightly different audience, change its pricing, add another feature, or reposition the product. These adjustments might improve the results slightly, but they can also keep the company trapped in a weak opportunity.

Gil describes this as getting stuck in a local maximum.

The founders may discover the best possible version of an idea that was never strong enough in the first place.

Imagine a startup building project-management software for a very narrow customer group. The product struggles, so the team adds integrations, lowers the price, and targets a neighbouring industry.

Each change may help a little. But if customers do not view the original problem as urgent, the company may still be operating within a limited market.

A larger pivot might involve applying the team’s technology or knowledge to a completely different problem.

That is harder because it requires founders to let go of what they have already built. But when the existing direction shows little demand, small changes may only delay a bigger decision.

Rethink Everything From the Ground Up

When a startup decides to pivot, Gil recommends reconsidering the opportunity more broadly.

“If the thing isn’t working and you decide to pivot, it’s often wise to rethink everything from the ground up.”

That can include questioning the customer, market, problem, product, pricing, and distribution strategy.

Founders do not need to throw away everything they have learned. Their technical expertise, customer conversations, industry knowledge, and professional relationships may still be useful.

But those assets should not restrict the company’s imagination.

A ground-up review should include questions such as:

• Are we solving a problem customers consider urgent?
• Are we serving the right market?
• Would anyone be seriously disappointed if our product disappeared?
• Are we continuing because of customer evidence or because we have already invested too much?
• What would we build today if we were starting again with everything we now know?

The last question can be particularly revealing.

Founders often become emotionally attached to an idea because they have invested time, money, and identity into it. But previous investment does not make the future opportunity stronger.

The decision should be based on where the company can go next, not how much work has already been completed.

Why Funding and Large Teams Make Pivots Harder

Gil also notes that major pivots become more difficult once a startup has raised substantial capital and hired a large team.

A small founding team can change direction quickly. There are fewer people to convince, fewer salaries to support, and fewer commitments to maintain.

A larger company has more responsibilities.

The founders must consider employees, investors, product roadmaps, customer commitments, and the expectations created during fundraising. Team members may also have joined specifically because they believed in the original mission.

This is one reason early-stage startups should be careful about scaling before they have clear signs of product/market fit.

Hiring creates momentum, but it also creates rigidity.

A large team may make the company look successful while reducing its ability to experiment. If the product is not working, the startup may need flexibility more than additional headcount.

Founders should first prove that customers care. Scaling becomes much safer after that evidence exists.

Look for Signs That Users Care

How can founders tell whether their product is beginning to work?

Gil suggests looking for evidence that users care deeply enough to tolerate imperfections.

One strong signal is when people continue using a product even though it is partly broken.

Twitter’s early users regularly encountered the platform’s famous “fail whale” during outages. The service was unreliable, yet people kept returning.

They cared more about the value of the product than the frustration caused by its technical problems.

That behaviour is meaningful.

Most users will not repeatedly return to a broken product simply to be polite. They return because they are receiving something important that they cannot easily get elsewhere.

This does not give startups permission to ignore quality. The bugs still need to be fixed.

But strong usage despite a rough experience can indicate that the company has discovered genuine demand.

Complaints May Be Better Than Silence

Customer complaints often feel discouraging, but Gil argues that they can also be a positive signal.

A completely uninterested customer will usually not spend time writing a detailed complaint. They will simply stop using the product.

A customer who reports issues, follows up repeatedly, or sends feature requests is showing that the product matters to them.

They want it to improve because they can imagine continuing to use it.

Founders should pay attention to the nature of the complaint.

Are customers frustrated because an important workflow is missing?

Are several people requesting the same feature?

Do they become upset when the product is unavailable?

Are they asking for changes that would allow them to use the product more frequently?

These complaints may reveal more genuine demand than polite praise from users who rarely return.

Of course, founders should not build every requested feature. Individual requests can pull the product in too many directions.

The goal is to identify patterns that reveal what customers value most.

Indifference Is the Real Warning Sign

The opposite of product love is not always criticism.

It is indifference.

A startup should be concerned when users try the product once, provide little feedback, and never return. They do not complain, request features, recommend it, or notice when it disappears.

Positive survey answers can also be misleading. People may describe an idea as “interesting” simply because they want to be supportive.

Behaviour offers stronger evidence.

Do customers return without reminders?

Do they pay?

Do they tell other people about the product?

Do they contact the team when something breaks?

Would they be disappointed if the product stopped existing?

A small number of passionate users can be more valuable than thousands of mildly interested ones.

Those early users help the startup understand why the product matters. They can also become the foundation for retention, referrals, and organic growth.

What Startup Founders Can Learn From Elad Gil

For startup founders in Canada, Gil’s perspective provides a practical framework for evaluating whether to continue, pivot, or rethink the company.

Set a time to review the evidence

Do not allow years to pass without honestly assessing whether the product is gaining traction.

Review retention, revenue, referrals, engagement, usage frequency, and customer feedback after a reasonable testing period.

Separate hard work from market progress

Features shipped, meetings attended, and hours worked are measures of activity.

Customer retention, repeat usage, referrals, and willingness to pay are measures of progress.

Study what users do

Customers may say they like a product while rarely using it.

Behaviour provides better evidence. Look for repeated usage, payments, recommendations, complaints, and feature requests.

Treat complaints as useful information

Do not become defensive when engaged customers criticize the product.

Their frustration may show that the product already plays an important role in their work or daily life.

Consider a larger pivot

When the original idea is not working, do not limit the company to nearby opportunities simply because they feel familiar.

Be willing to reconsider the customer, market, and problem completely.

Stay flexible before scaling

Avoid building a large organization before confirming that the market wants the product.

Smaller teams can experiment and change direction more easily.

Find people who will challenge your assumptions

A strong founder network in Canada can help entrepreneurs recognize when perseverance is productive and when it has become attachment.

Experienced founders, mentors, operators, and investors can identify blind spots that may be difficult for the internal team to see.

Sometimes, the most valuable startup support for founders is not encouragement to continue. It is an honest conversation about whether the company needs a different direction.

Why This Matters to the Startup Ecosystem in Canada

The startup ecosystem Canada is building needs ambitious and resilient founders.

But a healthy startup culture should not glorify struggle for its own sake.

The goal is not to see which founder can continue the longest without changing. It is to build companies that solve meaningful problems and create genuine value.

Entrepreneur support in Canada should help founders interpret customer behaviour, test assumptions, and make difficult decisions before time and capital run out.

Some companies need more time. Some need stronger execution. Others need a new market, customer, or business model.

In certain cases, founders may need to stop completely and apply what they have learned to a stronger opportunity.

Perseverance alone cannot determine which decision is right.

Founders need evidence.

When customers continue using an imperfect product, send detailed complaints, request features, and recommend it to others, the startup may be onto something.

When customers remain indifferent despite months of effort, the company may need to rethink its direction.

Gil’s message is not that founders should quit as soon as things become difficult.

It is that genuine demand usually leaves clues.

The founder’s job is to recognize those clues—and to be honest when they are missing.