Startup Things: Vol 1 | Signal in the Static
The beginning of a startup journey usually feels like Hawkins, Indiana, circa 1983. It’s sunny, the streets are familiar, and you and your friends are gathered around a table, planning a campaign with clear rules and predictable outcomes. You have a pitch deck (your D&D character sheet), a target market (the dungeon map), and a product roadmap (the quest).
Then, something happens on the way home. The lights flicker. The familiar path disappears. Suddenly, the temperature drops, toxic spores fill the air, and you realize you aren't in Hawkins anymore.
Welcome to the Upside Down of early-stage founder life.
In Season 1 of Stranger Things, the central conflict isn't fighting a monster—it’s a desperate search mission amidst confusion and disbelief. Will Byers has vanished. The authorities (traditional business wisdom) say he’s gone. The town continues as normal. But a few people know the truth: something else is out there.
For pre-seed founders, this is the reality of the hunt for Product-Market Fit (PMF). Your initial assumptions—the neat business plan you wrote in the sunlight—have vanished. You are now operating in a dark mirror dimension where customers don't behave how they're supposed to, investors are skeptical police chiefs, and the threat of running out of cash looms like a Demogorgon in the woods.
To survive Volume 1, you have to stop pretending things are normal. You have to learn to read the static.
I. The Vanishing of Certainty
The moment a founder goes "all in" is the moment they enter the Upside Down. The structure of corporate life or the safety of a steady paycheck is gone. There are no performance reviews, no clear deliverables—just an echoing void of ambition and anxiety.
In the show, the characters' first mistake is assuming Will is just lost in the woods. They apply conventional logic to an unconventional problem. Founders do this constantly. They build expensive, scalable products right out of the gate, assuming the market exists just because a spreadsheet said it did. They throw a generic landing page up and wait for the leads to roll in.
They are searching the woods with flashlights while the real action is happening in another dimension entirely.
The first step to finding PMF is admitting that your initial "map" is wrong. The market isn't behaving the way you thought it would. Admitting you are lost isn't failure; it’s the prerequisite for finding the right path. You have to stop looking for what should be there and start looking for what is there.
II. The "Christmas Lights" Strategy
The most brilliant metaphor for early customer validation in television history is Joyce Byers and her Christmas lights.
Everyone thought Joyce was losing her mind. She painted an alphabet on her living room wall and strung lights everywhere, convinced her missing son was communicating through the flickers. To the outside world, it looked like chaos and desperation. To Joyce, it was the only lifeline she had.
In the pre-PMF stage, you have to be Joyce Byers.
The market is incredibly noisy. There is immense "static"—generic advice on LinkedIn, contradictory blog posts, and competitors making flashy PR moves. If you listen to everything, you hear nothing. You need to set up your own communication apparatus designed to catch the faintest, weirdest signals from your true customers.
These signals rarely look like statistically significant data sets. They look like:
The 45-minute customer interview where someone suddenly gets emotional about a pain point you thought was minor. (One light flickers).
The ugly MVP feature that 10 users are obsessively using every single day, while ignoring the polished features you spent months building. (Another light flickers).
The "I wish it did this" comment that comes up in every single sales call. (The whole wall lights up).
Founder Takeaway: "Doing things that don't scale"—like hand-holding your first 50 users or manually performing the service your software is supposed to automate—is your version of painting the alphabet on the wall. It looks crazy to outsiders. But it’s the only way to establish a genuine connection with the reality of the market.
III. Finding Your "Eleven"
Mike, Dustin, and Lucas went looking for Will, but they found Eleven instead.
At first, El was a burden. She was weird, non-communicative, and ate all their Eggos. She didn't fit the "plan." But they soon realized that this strange girl possessed telekinetic abilities that fundamentally changed the power dynamic between them and the threats they faced.
In your hunt for PMF, you will likely find things you weren't looking for. You might set out to build a comprehensive enterprise platform, only to realize that one tiny, weird side-feature you built over a weekend is the only thing customers actually care about.
That feature is your Eleven.
Your "Eleven" is your supernatural advantage. It’s the wedge into the market that incumbents cannot easily replicate. It’s not just a "differentiator"; it’s a superpower.
Is your Eleven a proprietary dataset that no one else has?
Is it a unique user experience that turns a 10-hour workflow into a 10-minute one?
Is it a counter-intuitive business model that seems "wrong" to the legacy players?
Too many startups try to fight the Demogorgon with slingshots (slightly better features than the competition). You need telekinesis. When you find that unique insight—that unexpected customer behavior or technical breakthrough—nurture it. Feed it Eggos. Center your entire strategy around it. It is the only thing strong enough to rip open the gate between your idea and market acceptance.
IV. The Demogorgon at the Door
Why does all this matter? Why can't we just take our time?
Because the Upside Down is toxic. You cannot live there forever. In startup terms, the Upside Down is the state of burning cash without revenue growth. The longer you stay there, the weaker you get.
And there is a monster hunting you. The Demogorgon isn't a mean VC or a bad press article. The Demogorgon is market indifference. It is the cold reality that if you do not solve a "hair-on-fire" problem for someone soon, your company will die. It smells blood—which, in this analogy, is a high burn rate with low user engagement.
The hunt for PMF is a race against time. Every week you spend building the wrong thing, or ignoring the faint signals of the Christmas lights, the monster gets closer. If you can’t find the signal in the static, the market will eventually consume you.
V. Assembling the Party
By the end of Season 1, the characters realize they can’t survive alone. Joyce has the grit, Hopper has the muscle, the boys have the knowledge, and Eleven has the power. They have to assemble "The Party" to fight back.
As a founder, once you’ve identified that faint signal in the static and found your "Eleven" insight, you face a new challenge. You can no longer hide in your basement. You need help to execute on what you've found. You need to convince others to join you in the Upside Down.
You’ve found the signal. You’ve survived the first encounter with the monster. But as any fan of the show knows, the threat is only beginning to grow.
In Vol 2, we’re going deeper. We’re looking at what happens when your small party starts to scale, and the vines of the "Shadow Monster" begin to wrap around your company culture.
31st December 2025