Why Experience Matters More Than Intelligence in Founder Decisions

When founders talk about decision making, intelligence is often the focus. Strategy. Analysis. Pattern recognition. Being the smartest person in the room.

Those things matter. But they are not what carry founders through their most difficult moments.

What matters more is experience.

Not experience in the abstract. Lived experience. The kind that comes from having made irreversible decisions before. From having navigated consequences you could not spreadsheet your way out of. From knowing how uncertainty feels in your body, not just in your head.

Early in a company’s life, many decisions feel theoretical. There is still time. Still optionality. Still room to pivot. As a result, founders often lean heavily on intelligence. They reason. They optimize. They debate.

Later, the stakes change.

Capital is involved. People’s livelihoods are involved. Reputation is involved. And suddenly, the cost of being wrong is not just financial. It is personal.

This is where experience becomes decisive.

Experienced founders and advisors are not necessarily better because they know more. They are better because they recognize moments that require slowing down rather than pushing forward. They can sense when a decision is about ego versus survival. When persistence is courage, and when it is avoidance.

Experience creates perspective. It helps founders separate urgency from importance. It provides language for situations that otherwise feel isolating and overwhelming.

This is also why mentorship matters.

Not as instruction. Not as control. But as a steady presence who has seen similar moments before and can help name what is happening when everything feels compressed and unclear.

No founder builds alone, even when it looks that way from the outside. The most resilient founders are often the ones who know when to bring in experienced voices and trust them enough to listen.

Intelligence helps you start. Experience helps you endure. 

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