The messy middle

We love the fantasy of the beginning. We glorify the finish. But nobody talks about the brutal middle.

Photo: Dan Ascenzo

This week, I hosted Dr. Steven Charlap, Founder and CEO of SOAP Health on my podcast Life Sciences Today.

Steven spent $5M of his own money, 10 years of his life and built a system that eliminates mis-diagnosis with an AI that knows evidence-based primary care. He’s light-years ahead of VC-funded startups that raised hundreds of millions.

My essay today is about the Messy Middle.

Introduction

We love the romanticism of the start, when people quit their jobs and start something and launch a new idea or raise some funding.

Look at WeWork and Adam Neumann.

We also love the finish, whether it's an acquisition or an IPO, or a bankruptcy. Or investors suing the founders. Like the guy who raised $80M and used it for a private jet and sponsoring golf tournaments.

These are interesting stories that we love.

What we tend to ignore is the messy middle.

The start

Social media loves the romanticism of the start.

It’s like Christopher Columbus sailing off for the New World.

Or Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt into the promised land.

We are drawn to interesting stories, exceptional achievement and beautiful people.

An example is Mira Murati. Ms. Murati was the first CEO of OpenAI. She was instrumental in the deal with Microsoft and left OpenAI.

This week, it was reported that Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines is raising $2BN in a seed round at a $10BN valuation.

Ms. Murati checks all the boxes:

• Exceptionally smart

• Exceptionally successful

• Exceptionally beautiful

• Exceptionally rich

Humans are exceptionally visual.

We are drawn to beauty, especially female beauty.

We are drawn to success, especially unimaginable success like OpenAI.

We are drawn to perfect fairy-tales on social media.

Once upon a time, there was a short Moroccan woman, born in the Atlas Mountains. Sixty years old. Overweight. Not exactly Monica Bellucci.

After a career teaching Arabic in a high school in Sderot, Massouda launched Thinking Machines Lab.

Her co-founders? Former students. Combat IDF reservists. From Dimona, not Palo Alto.

Which founder story would go viral?

The messy middle

I think that one of the reasons that the press and social media do not cover the messy middle is because it’s not an interesting story.

It’s a painful story.

Just not interesting.

Because it reminds us of our own failings.

This week the Jews all over the world celebrate Pesach; how the children of Israel were freed from Egypt. The Jewish people were commanded in the Torah to remember this story and pass it down from generation to generation.

To remember this story as if we were there personally.

Interestingly enough, the Torah commands us to remember the exodus from Egypt and not the messy middle of the 40 years wandering in the desert. There was a lot of messy stuff going on. The golden calf. The Israelites wanted to go back to Egypt.

Incidents of not believing in Moses and in God anymore.

Getting the ten commandments only on the second attempt.

Moses losing faith. Losing his ticket to the Promised Land.

Now that’s a messy middle.

Perhaps the Torah didn’t need to command us to remember the messy middle because it became engrained in who the Jewish people are.

Part of the process of forging the people of Israel in the desert over 40 years.

But that’s a topic for another essay.

The messy middle is painful. It’s a reminder that working on a startup is the exact opposite of the romance of the start:

• We don’t seem (or feel) exceptionally smart

• We are not exceptionally successful

• We are not exceptionally beautiful photo opps.

• We are (not yet) exceptionally rich

There are anti-patterns working against you; like running out of money, like losing touch with your customers, like not selling high enough, like your marketing shifting under your feet

👉 Get my free ebook with 22 anti-patterns that will make you fail.

We repress painful memories, but when we do tell the stories of our pain in the messy middle, they are often extremely interesting stories.

A great example is the book written by Tracy Kidder, “The Soul of a new machine”. The start is romantic. The end is inspiring. In the middle, one of the Micro-Kids burns out and leaves a note on his desk: “I left to join a commune in Vermont”.

I interviewed Dr. Lior Shaltiel, CEO and founder of Nurexone this week for my podcast - “Life Sciences Today”. Nurexone is in the pre-clinical stage for their exosome platform to treat acute spinal cord injuries. Lior is raising money to do clinical trials.

I asked Lior: “What’s been your hardest day as a founder so far?”

His answer: “Every day.”

That’s the messy middle.

Outro

The messy middle seems like a fair fight to founders.

Our minds are flexible, able to shift gears to solve a problem rather than follow a set of procedures. We have the capacity for imagination. We have the ability to reason. We have the ability to learn.

It's easier than ever to start something. It is a lot harder to scale, but if you start something that really needs to exist, and you know how to mobilize your community of users then you might be able to get through the messy middle.

Now is a great time to take that idea that you have and see if it has legs.

Now.

“There is nothing else than now... and if now is only two days, then two days is your life... This is how you live a life in two days.”

— For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

Life Sciences Today is my brand-new podcast

I host leaders in life sciences. We talk about their personal journey. I dive into the business model and how the company captures value - not just how shiny the tech is.

Check out my conversation with Rony Angel from Centa Longevity on the podcast.
We dive into how their biotech platform helps us live a good life, not just a long life.

→ Listen here

I want to invite you to be a guest on “Life Sciences Today”.

If you’re changing the life science industry in drug development, clinical operations or real-world data, I’d love to host you on the show!

👉If you’d like to be a guest on the show - let’s talk!

👉 If you enjoy reading this post, feel free to share it with friends! Or feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover my writing. 🙏