Every startup begins with the same intoxicating combination of caffeine, optimism, and delusion. There’s the dream of world-changing technology, the fantasy of an IPO, and a Slack channel full of people saying things like we’re disrupting the disruptors. And for a while, everything looks like it’s going according to plan.
But then, slowly, inevitably, you start to see shadows forming on the horizon. You think it’s just the stress, or maybe the reflection of your rapidly dwindling runway. But no. Those are the hooves.
The Four Horsemen of the Startup are coming.
I’ve worked with dozens of startups over the years—some that went public and raised billions, others that were acquired well above valuation, and far too many that crashed despite brilliant ideas and tireless teams. You can always spot the red flags, but usually too late. One reminder came from a company that promised to make us all rich. I wasn’t interested in being rich; I was all-in because the technology was genuinely revolutionary. It had the potential to reshape entire industries. But as the months rolled on, the horsemen revealed themselves one by one. And as much as I tried to wave them off, they weren’t going anywhere. Eventually, I realized I wasn’t making progress—professionally or personally—and it was time to dismount.
Let’s meet them, shall we?
Greed: We’re Rich
Greed is the first horseman to arrive, and he’s often dressed in a Patagonia vest and holding a pitch deck. You’ll hear him whispering in the corner during strategy meetings: We can double the price, or We can cut this partnership and keep more equity. He’s the one who says, Let’s raise money now at a higher valuation before we’ve proven the model, or worse, Let’s promise future revenue we can’t possibly deliver.
Greed convinces founders that more is always better—more investors, more features, more partnerships, more funding rounds, more of everything except focus. He’s a master illusionist. The company starts believing that valuation equals value, that projections equal progress, and that burn rate is just another way of saying momentum.
I’ve seen Greed sink startups faster than any other force. One founder, convinced he could squeeze more out of the market, turned down a lucrative acquisition offer because he was sure the company was worth twice as much. Within a year, the product was obsolete, the market had shifted, and that same founder was begging his investors for bridge funding to make payroll. The tragedy wasn’t that he lost—it’s that he had already won and didn’t know it.
Greed’s real danger isn’t financial; it’s moral. It replaces the joy of creating something meaningful with the panic of chasing more. And once Greed takes the reins, the culture follows. People stop building for customers and start building for investors. Vision gives way to vanity metrics. The company’s north star becomes whatever bumps valuation.
Hubris: We Did This Before
Hubris rides in soon after, wearing founder-branded sneakers and a custom hoodie that says Visionary. He doesn’t need product-market fit because he’s certain he is the fit. Hubris thrives on founder worship—the myth that one genius at the top can bend reality to their will. It’s intoxicating. It’s also fatal.
In the early days, Hubris doesn’t look dangerous. After all, confidence is a survival skill in a startup. But somewhere between the first funding round and the company offsite, confidence mutates into arrogance. Suddenly, the founder believes every problem can be solved by more of their personal brilliance. Product feedback? They just don’t get it. Missed milestones? We’re redefining the category. Competitors? They’re idiots.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from a serial founder who had seen both sides of success.
The worst thing that can happen to a startup, is that the founder is right too early. Because then they start believing they’re right about everything.
Hubris creates blind spots the size of funding rounds. It alienates good advisors, burns out great employees, and turns team meetings into TED Talks. You’ll know Hubris has taken hold when you hear phrases like The Steve Jobs of this space or We’re not building a company, we’re building a movement. At that point, you’re not running a business—you’re managing a cult of personality with a cap table.
Ignorance: We’re Different
Ignorance is subtler than Greed or Hubris. He doesn’t gallop in with banners waving—he drifts in quietly, disguised as confidence. You’ll see him when founders ignore market data that doesn’t fit their narrative or dismiss feedback from customers because they’re not the target audience. Ignorance isn’t stupidity; it’s the refusal to learn.
Startups are supposed to be about learning—experiment, measure, adapt, repeat. But Ignorance flips that script. The team stops running tests because the CEO already knows what works. They don’t talk to customers because they’re too busy scaling. Product-market fit becomes a talking point rather than a process.
I once watched a company build an entire product suite based on assumptions no one had validated. When the data finally came in, it was a train wreck—customers didn’t want what was built, and salespeople couldn’t explain why it existed. When the engineers suggested pivoting, the leadership insisted that the problem was messaging. They weren’t wrong—the message was we don’t listen.”
Ignorance loves meetings where everyone agrees. It loves dashboards that measure activity instead of outcomes. It loves founders who say things like our intuition got us this far. The truth is, intuition can get you started, but only humility keeps you going. The founders who thrive aren’t the ones who think they know everything—they’re the ones who never stop asking questions.
Dominance: We Know Better
If Greed is seductive, Hubris magnetic, and Ignorance oblivious, Dominance is just exhausting. This is the founder or executive who needs to win every argument, approve every idea, and take credit for every success. They believe leadership means control, not collaboration. If there’s a whiteboard in the room, they’re holding the marker.
Dominance thrives in chaos because it feeds on insecurity. When things go wrong—and they always do—the dominant leader doubles down on control. Decisions slow to a crawl because no one else is allowed to make them. Team members stop taking initiative because it’s safer to wait for orders. Innovation dies, morale collapses, and the startup becomes a one-person bottleneck factory.
Ironically, Dominance often hides behind the language of accountability and standards. But real accountability is shared—it builds trust. Dominance destroys it. I once sat in a meeting where a CEO berated his lead developer for not thinking big enough. The developer quit two weeks later, and so did the next one. Within six months, the product roadmap was dead in the water. When I asked what happened, the CEO shrugged. No one’s stepping up. Of course not—he’d trained them not to.
Dominance doesn’t just crush creativity; it repels talent. Great people don’t want to be told what to do—they want to be inspired to do it. Once you lose that spirit, you might still have a company, but you no longer have a team.
The Startup Apocolypse
The irony of the Four Horsemen is that they often appear in the wake of early success. The teams that struggle through their first startup rarely fall for them again—they’ve learned humility, patience, and the value of failure. But those who strike gold on the first try are often the most vulnerable. Luck disguises itself as genius, and when they ride into their next venture, they bring the horsemen along for the journey.
I’ve come to believe that failure, painful as it is, is the best inoculation against these forces. The entrepreneurs worth following aren’t the ones who had one big exit—they’re the ones who built four companies and lost one along the way. They’ve felt the sting of hubris, the waste of greed, the embarrassment of ignorance, and the isolation of dominance. And they’ve learned that true leadership is less about control and more about stewardship.
The startup world loves to idolize winners, but the truth is, no one rides forever. Every founder will eventually face the horsemen. The only question is whether you recognize them soon enough to step out of their path.
As for me, I’m grateful for every lesson—painful, humbling, and occasionally expensive. I still believe in innovation, in founders who take real risks, and in technology that can change the world. But I’ve learned to listen for the sound of hooves in the distance. Because once they start galloping, it’s already too late.
©2025 DK New Media, LLC, All rights reserved | DisclosureOriginally Published on Martech Zone: The Four Horsemen of the Startup Apocolypse