A big challenge for founders is persuading people that something should exist before there is enough evidence to feel entirely certain of it themselves. While you need conviction to do this, you also need to be willing to learn things that may change your mind, even if it seems it will derail your plans.
This is where curiosity can be a business advantage. Staying curious means you have a chance to learn from something others might dismiss because it does not fit what they expected.
The reality is that unexpected things happen all the time in a startup. Users often have surprising responses and unexpected behaviors; stumbling points or new uses for your product arise; a team member views a problem completely differently; or a product creates an unintended outcome.
Being curious and open-minded, not defensive, can make these moments meaningful information signals instead of an inconvenience or a roadblock to meeting deadlines or a product timeline.
Why do companies lose their curiosity?
Companies lose their curiosity at the point when defending their original decision becomes more important than finding out whether it’s actually working. I have witnessed fairly often with fellow entrepreneurs that once they commit to a plan, they can become reluctant to take feedback seriously if it suggests they need to change course. This is understandable; certainty makes a company feel more stable. But the cost is that it can turn really important signals (which are not so glamorous to hear in the moment) into something the team explains away before it has had a chance to change anything.
When we tested what I thought was the right onboarding flow for our product, I realized how much it assumed people already understood. Because we were so close to our product, we had built around our own familiarity. I had to revisit those assumptions and rethink where the experience should begin from our customers’ point of view. We added more customer surveys and beta tests into our building process, which probably will add up to an additional month of build time, but will also create a more intuitive product that our customers really understand.
Making curiosity a habit
Here are three habits I’ve built to help me stay curious.
1. Keep note of things that interest you
I keep a notebook with me all the time, although a page in your notes app works just as well. I write down anything I find interesting, sometimes just a word or an idea I haven’t quite worked out yet. I review it each week to see what still holds my attention and deserves more thought.
2. Record what would change your mind
When you are making a big decision, take the time to write down the assumptions behind it and what it would take for you to reconsider your decision. This gives you evidence to return to when you evaluate the decision later, rather than relying on your memory of why it seemed right at the time.
3. Acknowledge competing explanations
If you feel certain about why a user behaved in a particular way, consider other plausible interpretations and how you could distinguish between them. Someone abandoning setup might find it cumbersome, or they might not understand why the product is worth using. Taking the time to really understand a behavior or patterns of behavior could lead to a critical discovery about your product.
For example, we just launched AI Passport, the only way to make your personal context portable across AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Muse, and Gemini; it’s still owned by you, not by the apps that collect it. We assumed that the initial customers would be tech-savvy professionals interested in AI Passport’s data privacy protections. What we actually saw was that people were more interested in how having all their data in one place could benefit them: help them study, organize family life, keep on top of health records, or put their saved ideas to use. Privacy mattered, but what I learned is that it becomes meaningful for most people only in the context of something they want to do.
Staying curious matters because building a company asks you to keep learning from other people, stay open-minded, and let what you learn change how you think, even as you become more experienced.
