Pillar article

Answer the top level first: the questions before you execute

By Pat Villaceran

A founder slides a list across the table. Questions to ask before starting a business: money, market, customers. Yes, for sure, you'll need those. But before you decide what to build, who to hire or where to put AI, answer these in writing: what is the culture about, what do you stand for first, what are you fighting for, why did you build this, and what is the impact? Those answers decide the build decisions underneath them. Founders who skip them end up executing someone else's plan, very efficiently.

Founders should answer the top-level questions in writing before deciding what to build, who to hire or where to put AI. In Pat Villaceran's view, money, market and customers still matter, but the answers above them shape the build decisions underneath. She asks founders to write one paragraph per question, alone, then test each real decision, such as the next hire or tool, against them. Her standard comes from the Innovation Philosophie site: build things that "outlast the trend cycle" and "leave people better than you found them".

Money and market matter, but go back to the top level questions first

When we recorded the agents episode, Nathan Reardon asked me the question every founder with an AI budget is asking. You want agents in your team. You don't want to lose what makes your people original. So what's the first decision?

I didn't give him a tool. I didn't give him a framework. I gave him questions. "Answer these questions. I'll answer the questions that I'm gonna give you, founder."

I said the same in our second episode: "It is always about asking the top level questions first before execution comes in."

They came out across a few minutes of conversation. I've kept them in the order I asked them, with the words I used in the recording for each, because the order matters. Each one narrows the next.

1. What is the culture about?

Picture two companies. One is built around AI. The other is built around people serving people. In the recording: "The first is what is the culture about?"

The example I gave was AI itself. "Because if you are an AI native culture, it is impossible to say, we're we're not replacing a lot of the things with AI." Pretending otherwise to look human-friendly works against you. And if you're the second company, bolting on agents everywhere because a competitor did will break the thing customers come for.

Culture is what happens when nobody is watching. Who gets praised? What gets cut first when money is tight? Which mistakes get forgiven? The values poster on the wall has nothing to do with it.

Write one paragraph. Can't? Then that's your first job.

2. What do you stand for first?

Quality and speed collide on a Friday afternoon. Which one wins? A big client wants something that cuts against how you treat your team. Which way do you go? I asked it twice when we recorded: "What do you stand for? What do you stand for first?"

"First" is there for a reason. Most founders can list 10 things they care about. Very few have ranked them. Standing for something means you decided the ranking before the moment arrived.

For us, it's one line, from our second episode: "if it's not magical enough, don't do it."

3. The fight you pick

A founder can stand for honesty and be fighting for small farmers to get paid on time. "Because once you know that, what are you fighting for?"

Standing for something is how you behave. Fighting for something is the change you want outside the company. A change that isn't there yet. And so the fight gives your team a direction when the plan runs out. In my experience, it always does.

4. The real reason you built it

It's 11pm, and a friend asks you why you really started this. Same breath in the recording: "Why did you build this? What are you fighting for? Why did you build this?" I repeat it because, in my experience, founders answer the easy version first.

The easy version is the pitch deck. "We saw a gap in a large market." The real one was true before the market told you it was a good idea. It's usually personal and a bit embarrassing. You were the customer who got treated badly. You watched your parents' business struggle with the same problem for years. You'd tell your friend. You'd probably leave it out of the investor meeting.

Write the real one. Competitors can't copy it, because they don't have your history.

5. What is the impact?

"We help businesses grow" is on so many websites. It doesn't count. "What is the impact, Nathan? What is the impact of this?"

Impact is what is different for real people because you exist. Who, exactly, is better off? How would you know? This is where I hold founders to the line from our site: you build things that "outlast the trend cycle", and you "leave people better than you found them".

The answers make the decisions

Take a company whose answers point it towards building an AI platform. Where should the next hire go? "When you know the point of the build, you can then now create decisions". For that company, my call was this: "Customer support. We need people more on the development and engineers." And: "That's not the focus right now. We need engineers who are going to really develop our AI platform."

That's a hard call. Plenty of founders would say the opposite, and for a company with different answers at the top, the opposite would be right. The call comes from the top. The tool only carries it out.

Fast food works the same way. Picture a burger chain that uses robots to carry food to the table. That chain "has a different why at the top", and for them it's "about the fun of the experience." Now put the same robots in a fine dining room. Could you imagine? They'd send the opposite message, because that room has a different why.

A little slower at first

You have a runway, a roadmap and a board meeting on Thursday. Philosophy can wait, right? Give it an afternoon.

It can't wait, because you'll make these decisions either way. Skip the top level and you'll answer it by accident, one tool purchase and one hire at a time, copying whatever your feed says is working. Six months later you'll have a company, and you won't be sure it's yours.

And the questions protect people. I said it straight: "Do not replace everyone with AI. What is the point?" I also said an AI-native business still needs "creative people answering the ethics of what you're building." If nobody has written the answers down, your people end up as a number on the cost sheet. Once the answers are written down, it shows who in your team carries what you stand for.

They make accountability possible too. When a decision goes wrong, you can point at the page and ask whether you followed it.

Write it alone, then show your co-founder

Book one afternoon, alone, with paper. Leave your co-founder and team out of the first draft. In my experience, group discussion drifts towards whatever the loudest person says. That is why I suggest you brainstorm alone first and then compare.

Write one paragraph per question, in this order: culture, what you stand for, what you're fighting for, why you built this, the impact.

Underline one sentence in each paragraph that you'd defend in front of your team, your investors and your hardest customer.

Take your next real decision, the hire, the tool, the feature, and test it against the underlined sentences. If it fits, go. If it doesn't, either the decision changes or one of the answers was wrong. Both are useful to know.

Show it to your co-founder second. It's far easier to disagree about a paragraph than about a hire you've already made.

Then, in my words from the end of that segment: "Answer the top level first and then" "Execute."

Where to begin

Tonight. Take the first question and give it one paragraph on paper. When the episode is released, you can hear the full conversation.

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