The hardest startup question isn’t how fast you can build. It’s why

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.” — Joseph Campbell.

That is the grounding reality of Oliver Burkeman’s book, Four Thousand Weeks. The title represents the average lifespan of a human being. If you’re lucky and hit 90, you get closer to 4,700 weeks.

It’s no wonder the longevity movement has taken off; the time we have on this earth, in Burkeman’s words, feels “absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short”.

In his book, Burkeman describes life on the productivity conveyor belt: “We’re obsessed with our overfilled inbox and lengthening to-do lists, haunted by the guilty feeling that we ought to be getting more done or different things done, or both.”

He notes a vicious paradox: “When you get tremendously efficient at answering emails, all that happens is that you get much more email.” By focusing entirely on velocity, are we actually getting the right things done, or just more things?

In the age of AI, we are swimming in tools designed to maximise throughput; processing invoices instantly, automating code, and streamlining workflows. But to what end?

At a recent VC networking event, the conversation shifted towards hiring – the observation from some being that job losses weren’t the issue, the issue was not being able to hire quick enough. Hiring and onboarding are taking too long. What AI platforms are people using to automate the process?

It’s a valid operational pain point, but it skips right past the crucial question: What are we actually optimising for? If we use AI to screen, interview, assess and onboard candidates, two things happen.

First, candidates will inevitably learn to game the algorithms.

Second, and more dangerously, we flatten nuance.

My definition of a great hire and your definition require entirely different corporate DNA.

When you outsource that judgment to a standardised model, you lose alignment. By optimising purely for hiring speed, you risk rapidly scaling a culture that doesn’t actually fit your vision.

In the startup ecosystem, this forces an existential question for founders and backers alike: What is actually worth building? What is worth funding?

Many voices in the market would argue, “Just chase the capital, scale the numbers, and worry about the impact later.” But what if later never comes? What if your 4,000 weeks get cut short?

For investors, the playbook seems to increasingly be simplified to just accumulating wealth indefinitely. When Elon Musk passed the historic $1 trillion mark following the SpaceX IPO last month, it highlighted a jarring mathematical reality: if he spent $1 million a day, he would need roughly 35 lifetimes to get through his fortune.

The world looks at that metric and declares him the most successful person on earth. Would you?

If AI is handling the “how” of productivity, humans are left entirely responsible for the “why.”

True leadership today isn’t about running faster on a conveyor belt someone else built.

It’s about having the conviction to build and fund things that genuinely matter. There is never a perfect time to pivot toward the hard, meaningful problems.

But if you only have a few thousand weeks left on the clock, how do you want to spend your remaining weeks?