The Opening, Midgame and Endgame in Startups
TLDR
- The best founders run opening, midgame, and endgame simultaneously rather than sequentially, staying nimble as conditions change.
Key Takeaways
- Opening (inception/seed) is where foundational decisions are hardest to reverse; Paul Graham is cited as its primary theorist.
- Midgame begins at product-market fit and requires building company infrastructure: hiring, management, and sustained momentum.
- Endgame is the infinite future vision; without it, present execution loses meaning, as seen in recent SaaS contraction.
- Structural fit varies: Stanford AI startups are engineered for the opening, vertical SaaS for the midgame, deep tech for the endgame.
- Concrete examples used: Clay (opening vibe ten years in), RunwayML (midgame traction pre-Stable Diffusion), Anduril (early inevitability), Scale AI’s Alex Wang, and Crusoe’s pivot from crypto mining to AI infrastructure.
Why It Matters
- Founders who only optimize for their current phase get trapped: strong opening stories risk hubris before real value is built; weak endgames struggle to raise without outsized traction.
- Deep tech companies face a structurally long, fatigued midgame precisely because the endgame story is always clear from day one.
- Holding all three frames in parallel enables faster strategy adjustment when market conditions shift, producing cultures that continuously reinvent themselves.
amoore · Sequoia Capital · 2026-02-11 · Read the original
