The Startup Podcast20 Okt 2025

The 4 Biggest Execution Mistakes Founders Make

Think you’re executing well? Think again. Chances are you’re making one of these four common mistakes.

Drawing from Chris’s latest essay and real-world advisory experience, Chris and Yaniv spend this episode breaking down the four biggest execution mistakes you're probably making right now. They explore how to recognize these patterns early, how to apply taste and judgment when scaling, and how to develop the discipline needed to execute with precision.

In this episode, you will:

Identify when you’re oversimplifying, and mistaking nuanced, unique use cases for the same problem
Understand how overcomplicating your product or process can destroy focus and momentum
Learn to categorize problems correctly using the principle of mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive thinking
Apply the concept of “necessary and sufficient” work — doing everything that’s needed and nothing that’s not
Recognize that mistiming priorities ends in attempting to do everything at once, but finishing nothing
Develop the taste, judgment, and rigor to strike the perfect balance between simplicity and depth
Avoid falling into domain dogma; naming, structuring, and communicating ideas clearly for your team and customers

Read Chris’s original LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/chrissaad_the-big-4-execution-mistakes-youre-probably-activity-7379681603847049216-ApcV

The Pact

Honor the Startup Podcast Pact! If you have listened to TSP and gotten value from it, please:

Follow, rate, and review us in your listening app
Subscribe to the TSP Mailing List to gain access to exclusive newsletter-only content and early access to information on upcoming episodes: https://thestartuppodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe
Secure your official TSP merchandise at https://shop.tsp.show/
Follow us here on YouTube for full-video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNjm1MTdjysRRV07fSf0yGg
Give us a public shout-out on LinkedIn or anywhere you have a social media following

Key links

Get your question in for our next Q&A episode: https://forms.gle/NZzgNWVLiFmwvFA2A

The Startup Podcast website: https://www.tsp.show/episodes/

Learn more about Chris and Yaniv

Work 1:1 with Chris: http://chrissaad.com/advisory/

Follow Chris on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrissaad/

Follow Yaniv on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ybernstein/

Producer: Justin McArthur https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-mcarthur

Intro Voice: Jeremiah Owyang https://web-strategist.com/

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(313)

ScaleStudio: The new tool putting our principles into practice

After nearly 300 episodes of The Startup Podcast, Chris Saad is bringing everything he's learned about building world-class products and product strategy into a single tool: ScaleStudio. In what may b...

3 Aug 46min

Rob Snyder demonstrates his PULL framework in real-time – using Yaniv's startup

A few weeks ago, Rob Snyder came on the pod to introduce his PULL framework for identifying real product-market fit. Now, Yaniv turns the tables and subjects his own startup, Vera, to the same scrutin...

27 Jul 52min

Why you should run your startup like a poker player (Replay)

This is a remastered Replay of one of our most popular episodes, "What Startups Can Learn From Poker", which was originally published on 21 December 2022. Enjoy!Original description: All season, Chris...

20 Jul 43min

Avoiding ‘team debt’ by building small and smart (w/ Matt Cook)

Is hiring a person still your default answer to a problem? For a growing number of startups, it shouldn't be.In this episode, Yaniv Bernstein is joined by returning guest Matt Cook, co-founder of Scou...

13 Jul 56min

How good timing makes great products w/ Paul Orlando

Every startup pitch deck has a "why now" slide. Most of them are nonsense, barely considered, and only there to tick a box.But timing is more than a slide, it can make or break a company. It’s the dif...

6 Jul 55min

Make your product irresistible: Rob Snyder on the PULL framework

You’ve done all the research, implemented every startup strategy you could find, but your product just isn’t selling. Where do you start looking for the problem? And how do you identify and implement ...

29 Jun 53min

Success is 90% luck. So how do you build a successful startup? (w/ Mike Grossman)

Founders are told that if they work hard, build the right product and hire well, the outcome will follow. It's motivating. It's clean. And according to today's guest, it's mostly wrong.Mike Grossman h...

22 Jun 54min

Insiders React: Anthropic’s Fable, Mythos explained + SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO

The Startup Podcast is back for its 300th episode – and it’s an absolute doozy. In today’s Reacts, hosts Chris Saad and Yaniv Bernstein break down how Anthropic became the new industry leader in AI, a...

16 Jun 52min