The Micro and Macro Actions for a founder
— Founders Desk
A startup is all about big leaps — businesses that grow at unimaginable rates, say exponentially, are high risk and high reward.
Because of this, it becomes a challenge for the founder to decide what to focus on: chase the million-dollar investment, fix that irritating bug, or write that small drop-in-the-ocean blog post that may or may not be read.
The answer, as always, is unclear. But same as everything in startups — you try to strike a balance between small, low-gain actions and high-stakes moves that could change the company’s trajectory.
Bring Intent to Both Scales of Action
Whether it’s that 10-minute customer support reply, a UI polish, or a pitch deck rewrite — the key is intentionality.
Some actions have compounding returns only visible over time. Others are all-or-nothing bets that can’t be taken lightly.
The founder’s job is to constantly toggle between these two planes:
Micro Actions – Compounding through Consistency
Writing that user manual that helps just 5 users understand your product better.
Pushing out a minor feature that unblocks a small but crucial user segment. Setting up a demo meeting with the person you met at a conference.
Setting up a feedback form. Or following up on a support ticket. Or taking that urgent customer call.
Listening, refining, and iterating — every day, even when it's not glamorous.
At MonitorExam, I remember obsessing over OTP in auto-proctoring exam-entry — a tiny feature most people would skip over. But for our users, that small switch became the difference between friction and flow.
It didn’t make headlines. But it increased adoption and retention quietly, every single day.
Macro Actions – Bold Moves that Shape the Future
Signing that first strategic partnership or hiring the marketing consultant.
Rewriting your go-to-market or pricing model after real user signals.
Saying no to tempting distractions that dilute your core mission.
Pitching investors who may say no, or may say yes and change everything.
When we decided to build inhouse test hosting solution assessME, it wasn’t just an engineering decision — it was a belief in our long-term edge. It took weeks to architect and build, and more to convince others it mattered.
That one move is now powering the verification room of the product at scale and making the registration seamless
Why Founders Must Live in Both Worlds
Staying only in the micro can make you miss the forest for the trees.
Living only in the macro can make you forget what the ground feels like.
Great founders dance between both:
They can send out a small product update in the morning and defend their five-year vision by afternoon.
It’s not easy. But that’s the job.
Final Thought: Build the Muscle of Judgment
There’s no formula for when to go small and when to go bold.
But over time, you develop the gut feel — the judgment to know when your time is better spent closing a partnership or fixing the signup funnel.
In the end, progress in a startup often looks like this:
A hundred tiny pushes,
A few giant leaps,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Founders Desk
From the journey of building MonitorExam – calm, credible, secure exams.