When founders reject new ideas, strategy dies quietly
A Bob & Alice anti-pattern, revisited
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio
I wrote this essay 2 years ago, before I had language for what I now call ‘losing your optionality’ in MedTech.
Rereading it today, I was surprised how early the failure mode appears.
Long before teams argue about execution, pricing, or go-to-market, they often fail at something simpler: they stop hearing ideas that don’t fit their internal narrative.
This piece captures that moment — in story form — before anyone realizes the damage is already baked in.
The Man with the Tattooed Fist
Introduction
We meet a new anti-design pattern: RejectNewIdeas.
Alice is legal counsel with the FBI. Her ex is under surveillance by the FBI for money laundering.
How will Alice handle the situation?
Giganet has a SaaS application for collecting work hours from gig workers using watches. A security show-stopper threatens the startup.
How will Barry, Bob and Iris handle the situation?
The man with the tattooed fist
Thursday morning, Alice was outside the Federal Courthouse.
Alice is legal counsel with the FBI field office in LA, specializing in prosecuting money-laundering and international crimes.
There were 3 agents with her. Inside, 2 Colombian nationals would soon be charged with money-laundering. After they were picked up by LAPD for possession of cocaine, LAPD queried NCIC and the names of the 2 Colombians popped up.
Sam, the FBI agent who works closely with Alice asks her, “Do you know Agent Timothy Kelley?
He nodded towards a tall, heavyset Irishman. “Kelley wants a minute of your time”.
Alice walks over to Kelley. “Tim - how can I help you?”
Tim said, “I can think of 2 ways I can help you”.
Alice flashes him a smile, “Keep on trying, I’m out of your league little man”.
Tim shows her a picture of a tall, sandy-haired man. “Do you know this man”?
It’s blurred, but Alice recognizes her ex, Dave.
She and Dave met at USC, she was studying law, and he was tall, easygoing and majored in finance. They got married after graduation and by the time she finished her LL.M in international law, they had 3 children.
Dave became a derivatives trader and they bought a nice house in Santa Monica. They were on the fast track to successful careers and family, except for one thing. Money corrupts.
Dave had a rich client. He hit on her and didn’t stop there. 6 months later, Alice divorced him, took the house and a settlement.
She said to Kelley, “You have him under surveillance?”
“Since last Tuesday”.
Alice, “Then you know it’s my ex - so what’s this do-I-know-him shit?”
“What I mean to ask, what do you know?”
“He picked up my kids last Friday. They spent Friday, Saturday, Sunday with him and brought them back to my place Sunday afternoon”.
“What’s he think about you being with the FBI?”
“Look”, Alice said, “Why don’t you stop dicking around and tell me what’s going on?”
“See Alice, the situation is sensitive”, Kelley said with a blank expression. “A derivatives trader is a suspect for wire fraud and money laundering. Married to an FBI lawyer”.
Sam thought Alice was going to punch out Kelley. Sam pulled her back and told Kelley to behave himself if he wanted cooperation from Alice.
The FBI called the tall, sandy-haired, laid-back, good-looking man “Slick”, assigning nicknames to suspects in their investigations.
Slick was a suspect in money laundering, a possible suspect in 7 more cases, judging from the surveillance videos, all the same guy.
Slick appeared to be fresh meat, just getting into crime. His motivation, support a lavish lifestyle, after he made some highly speculative trades and lost big.
Kelley, “We got a hit on Slick from the Verint Telus system. Looked him up in NCIC, drew a blank. That’s why we think he’s a newbie”.
Alice, “What do you want me to do, get his prints off a can of Fanta?”
Kelley shrugged, “That’s a good start, maybe all we need. What I want you to do is to talk to Dave, see if he has any money issues, seems to be under any stress…”
“Be your snitch”, Alice said, regretting it as soon as she said the words.
Kelley, “You’re a Federal agent, Alice. Deal with it”.
Sam said, “That’s enough Tim”, standing up for Alice as he would for any team member, not because she was a woman. Alice was tougher and smarter than any other agent in the LA field office, with emotional intelligence off the charts.
Kelley said, “Dude, I need her. Is she with us or against us?”.
Sam handed Alice his Smith & Wesson MP9 - “Here, you want to shoot him, go ahead”.
Alice smiled, “Timothy, there is one thing. Dave has an identifying mark that might help you identify him. He has a small blue tattoo with the word FDIC on the top of his index finger”.
Kelley falls for the bait. “What is that, some kind of derivatives-trader joke on the banking system?.”
Alice smiling back, “or not - it stands for Fuck Dumb Irish Cops”.
Kelly comes back, “Let’s make a bet. If he’s clean, you buy me dinner”. Alice, “And if he’s dirty?”
Kelley, “Well girl, I’ll buy you dinner”.
Alice goes home. After taking a shower, she looks at herself in the mirror. Still a size 6 at age 40. Good legs in a straight skirt and heels. No longer a “girl”, but she could handle that. To her old grandmother, Girls and Boys were single people, no matter how old they were.
Alice calls her father Jerzy.
Her grandmother hated Jerzy. She called him, “The man with a black BMW and black heart”.
Jerzy is an options trader and very well-connected, maybe he knows something.
Alice tells her Dad that Dave is a suspect in a FBI money-laundering case. That an FBI agent wants her to snitch on Dave and help them build their case.
Jerzy said, “Lemme guess, a tall red-haired Irishman, Tim Kelley? Or maybe I’m confused with Tim Kelley, you know, the middle linebacker that plays for the Chicago Bears?”
Alice, “Dad, stop it”. “Alice, you are a Federal agent. You don’t owe Dave anything”.
Alice, “But why would Dave risk 20 years in prison?”.
Her Dad, “He lost big on derivative trades, and needs to get it back to support his lavish lifestyle with his girlfriend. Maybe he likes the adrenaline rush of laundering money and getting away with it”.
Alice, “So you’re saying I should be a snitch?”
“Actually, I’m saying, you should get yourself a boyfriend, and move on”.
Venice beach - Giganet
Pesya, the jolly hacker matriarch, slightly overweight, always laughing, always thinking about going to the gym; discovered vulnerabilities in the Giganet system with $25M in exposure to fines for CCPA privacy violations.
Iris thinks back to their conversation last week:
Pesya, “Iris, You cannot release the system like this.
In addition to the DDOS vulnerabilities, there are XSS vulnerabilities. Attackers may be able to extract contract information about the gig workers and conduct a side-channel attack to identify people. You will be in violation of CCPA.
CCPA penalties have an upper cap of $7,500 per intentional violation or $2,500 per non-intentional violation. It may seem like a small penalty, but it can eventually grow massive. The penalties can quickly add up because one consumer equals one violation.
Pesya, “How many users do you have now?” Iris replies, “About 10,000 users”.
Pesya, “You have $25M in exposure”. She deliberately uses the word exposure with Iris so that Iris will understand financial impact.
“We’ll need another 4 weeks for security testing and validation after Lena and Justin finish. Yasmin’s back end module is not affected and the rest of the front-end is fine. You need to allow 12-13 weeks to fix this problem”.
Giganet has a major milestone in a week with LA County, their first large account. The revenue and reputation are critical to Giganet survival. They don’t have 12-13 weeks. They need the cash.
Iris tells Barry and Bob, “Let’s go out for lunch. Somewhere people don’t know us”.
They drive over to the Golden Dragon. As they walk in, they hear a loud chatter of customers mixed with laughter and clattering dishes. They feel the kitchen’s energy and strong smell of spices, and the sizzling stir-fry. Iris says, “I love this place”, and asks a server for a corner booth for 3. They are starving and order dim-sum. They wait until their server walks away before talking.
She asks Bob and Barry to help figure out a solution.
Iris, “We need 3 months to fix the issues and install an update.
Best case, we deliver on-time, and we don’t get attacked before the update.
Worst case, LA County cancels the contract and we shut down the company.”
Iris turns to Bob after their waitress fills up the table with dim-sum and the three of them wait for her to leave before they resume the conversation.
Iris, “Bob - don’t you have some tech magic that you can do to fix this by next week?”
Bob is angry with Iris for hiring a person on Upwork to develop the contracts module without consulting with him in order to save money.
He’s known about this problem for months and avoided resolution with Iris.
Bob pretends to have an open mind.
He’s found that pretending helps him deal with non-technical people.
Bob, “We could use a Web application firewall (WAF) to mitigate the code vulnerabilities. That could buy time for us to fix the software.
But - I don’t believe in silver bullets. Attackers might still be able to extract contract information about the gig workers and conduct a side-channel attack to identify people. We have $25M of exposure for a CCPA violation and we can’t afford that kind of exposure and loss of reputation.
I refuse to support this solution. A WAF is a band-aid. We need to fix the code.”
Iris is struggling to accept Bob’s rejection.
Iris, “We’ll lose the contract, reputation and maybe the company”.
Bob looks over at Barry, Italian gangster look, polo shirt, slacks, tasseled loafers.
Bob stops for a second and looks over to Iris, grinning from ear to ear.
Iris, “Did you just have a good idea, Bob?”
Bob, “The best defense is a good offense. Barry just gave me an idea. Let’s pretend we have a solution”.
RejectNewIdeas Anti-Pattern
What it looks like
You reject new ideas before understanding them.
This anti-pattern is fundamentally about your ability as a leader to accept and nurture new ideas from the team, even if they are not your ideas.
Effective leaders are those who, regardless of their own natural talents, cultivate an environment where every team member’s ideas are met with openness and curiosity.
Solution
Don’t resist new ideas. Pretend you agree. Start by asking questions.
Instead of rejecting an idea immediately, pretend that you are interested in it, even if you are not. By questioning - you open yourself up to understanding the value the other person brings to the table.
Pretending to agree delays toxic resistance and asking questions increases your chances of your team member listening to you.
Eventually - unless you are a total idiot - you will develop constructive conversations with your team members on a regular basis instead of rejecting new ideas and repressing innovation.
Eventually - you will start accepting new ideas.
On a park bench in Venice CA
Mark was the one who began.
Mark, “Bob, tell me what’s happening at Giganet, and what’s new with Alice?”.
Mark remained silent as they sat on the park bench.
In front of them there was the green calm of the park.
A man hungry for an answer, must stock up on patience.
A man in possession of analytical skills needs to listen.
That is why Mark remained silent.
Mark listened carefully to Bob’s story for about 15 minutes.
Bob, “I’ll help Alice with her mouse problem in the kitchen. I think she has something on her mind”.
Mark, “Good. Use the SelfCare pattern with Alice. Ask questions and be a good listener.
At Giganet, it seems you almost got stuck on the RejectNewIdeas pattern but you did a good job of pretending to have an open mind and that bought you time to think about a different approach.
Let’s talk about how to implement an offensive solution to mitigate the threat to your company.
Why this still matters
What this story describes isn’t a personality flaw.
It’s a leadership anti-pattern.
Founders don’t reject new ideas because they’re arrogant.
They reject them because acknowledging those ideas would force a different — and harder — strategic choice than their default.
That quiet rejection compounds.
And by the time it shows up as a commercial problem, it’s already too late to fix cheaply.
Continue reading
I explore how commercial success comes from making commercial tradeoffs and taking the harder, less-traveled strategic choice.
This essay is part of an ongoing series on patterns that shape what happens after FDA clearance — in product, teams, and markets.
About me
For 25+ years I’ve worked across tech, cybersecurity, privacy, and clinical data — from Israeli MedTech startups to Verily, Amgen, and the Fortune 1 company.
Most MedTech teams don’t fail early.
They fail after clearance, after traction, after the story they tell themselves turns to stone.
My work focuses on how MedTech founders lose optionality three years in.
If you want a clear view of what’s likely to break in your 2026 plan, book a CEO Audit 2026 below.
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A compelling narrative-driven warning about how leadership failure often begins not with bad decisions, but with the quiet refusal to truly hear inconvenient ideas