People talk about “growth mindset” so much that it’s easy to stop hearing what it actually means. The idea sounds soft, like something you might find on a HR poster in an hallway.
But for startups, it’s much more practical than that. In fact, if you’re trying to build something new, the way you and your team think about learning might end up being one of the strongest predictors of whether you survive or not.
When you’re starting out, you probably imagine the main risks are competitors, funding, or product decisions. But the real risk is usually something more internal: getting stuck. Fixed thinking. Fear of looking stupid. A slow drift toward mediocrity that happens one cautious decision at a time.
Understanding the difference between people who keep getting better and people who plateau is more useful than understanding competitors. So let’s talk about what a growth mindset actually is and how to make it work for your startup.
What’s a growth mindset?
Growth mindset is a term created by Dr Carol Dweck. Essentially it’s the belief that your abilities aren’t fixed. They can be improved through learning, repetition, effort, better techniques, and sometimes just stubbornness.
The opposite is a fixed mindset, where people believe their skills are set in stone and can’t change.
If you believe skills are fixed, you’ll try fewer things. You’ll avoid the hard stuff. You’ll fear being exposed as someone who doesn’t know something. You’ll quietly limit the surface area where luck can hit you.
But if you believe you can get better at almost anything, you’ll try more experiments. And the more experiments you run, the better your odds of finding something that works. That’s most of startup success right there.
Why you need a growth mindset in a startup
Most big companies are designed to avoid risk. Startups don’t have that luxury. You’re inventing something faster than you can write down your process. Your team is usually small. Everyone has more responsibility than they’re used to. And everything is on fire, at least quietly.
There’s a moment that happens in almost every early startup:
A new hire joins. They’re excited. They sit down on their first day.
Then they realise something.
- There is no onboarding.
- There are no guard rails.
- There is no roadmap.
There probably isn’t even a real job description.
They look around and think, “I have no idea what to do.”
This moment separates growth-mindset people from fixed-mindset people.
Someone with a fixed mindset panics. They need certainty. They feel exposed. They hesitate. Soon they are doing the bare minimum just to avoid mistakes.
Someone with a growth mindset starts experimenting. They try things. They ask questions. They take initiative. They figure out something useful and do it before being told. They grow faster than the startup itself.
Founders often say they want people who are resilient, proactive, and adaptable. What they actually mean, without realising it, is that they want growth-mindset people.
Growth mindset versus perfectionism
People usually talk about perfectionism as a single thing. But there are actually two kinds.
1. Vice Perfectionism (Fear-Based)
This kind holds people back. These employees are terrified of being wrong. They need to be certain before acting. They delay decisions. They overthink simple tasks. They avoid taking ownership because ownership exposes them to failure.
Vice perfectionism kills early-stage progress. Sometimes quietly, sometimes dramatically.
To combat vice perfectionism, you should promote learning through failure.
A few initiatives that have successfully implemented such a practice include the famous F*Up Nights and the issue log, a tool used to publicly record mistakes for the purpose of learning, first introduced and made popular by Ray Dalio.
2. Virtue Perfectionism (Excellence-Driven)
This kind is useful. These people want to produce great work because they take pride in it. They iterate fast. They care about quality. They love improving things.
These employees are the ones who push the team forward instead of freezing it.
You can often tell which perfectionism someone has by watching how they respond to mistakes.
- If they shut down or blame someone else, it’s vice.
- If they become curious and ask, “What can I try next?” it’s virtue.
The best startup teams tend to have a mix of learners, experimenters, and virtue perfectionists. But vice perfectionists will often slow everyone else down – not because they’re bad, but because the environment feels too uncertain for their fixed thinking for them to thrive.
Once you’ve recognised that a growth mindset is vital to the survival of early-stage startups, you’re already on the right track. But first, some myths that might stand in your way.
The growth mindset myths
Growth mindset has become so popular that people have reduced it to clichés – many built on Misconceptions.
Below are three most common myths that founders are falling for.
Myth 1. A growth mindset is absolute
Some founders talk like people are either “growth mindset people” or “fixed mindset people.” That’s not how it works. Mindset is situational. Someone might take risks in product but become rigid in sales. Or they might be bold at work but fragile with feedback.
Everyone slides along the spectrum depending on stress, skill level, and environment. The trick is creating conditions where people shift toward growth instead of fear.
Myth 2. It’s enough to put in effort
Sometimes founders reward effort too much. They praise hustle but ignore whether the work leads anywhere. This creates a team that tries hard but doesn’t improve. People repeat the same mistakes. Meetings become status updates instead of experiments.
To truly champion growth, recognition should focus not only on the effort your team put in but also what they learn and the progress they make from it.
Myth 3. Words on the wall will help
You can put “growth mindset” on the wall, on the website, or in a slide deck. Nothing will happen.
Culture is built out of behaviour, not slogans. If you want people to take risks, you actually have to reward risk-taking. If you want people to learn from mistakes, you have to make it safe to admit them.
A wall of values is often a sign that a team has stopped living those values.
The simplest test is: what do people get praised for? That tells you the real culture.
What a growth-mindset culture actually looks like
If you want your startup to grow, you need people willing to try things they don’t yet know how to do. But they won’t do that unless they feel safe experimenting. Here are things you can do as a founder (or team member) to nudge the culture in the right direction.
1. Run experiments constantly
Most founders don’t run enough experiments. They spend too long thinking instead of trying. Growth mindset starts by shrinking the cost of failure. Small experiments make it cheap to be wrong.
Examples:
- Test a new landing page in an afternoon.
- Try a new customer email today instead of next week.
- Let a junior team member run a user interview.
- Start a tiny feature, not a huge one.
Teams that experiment grow faster than teams that debate.
2. Hold blameless post-mortems
After something fails, most people want to know who caused it. That’s the fastest way to kill learning. A blameless post-mortem instead asks “what broke the system?” not “who broke the system?”
When people aren’t scared of consequences, they surface the real information you need.
3. Make it safe to ask questions
People rarely ask the most useful questions because they’re afraid of looking dumb. One of the simplest ways to create a growth environment is for founders to publicly admit when they don’t know something.
Nothing accelerates learning like leaders saying, “I might be wrong, but here’s what I’m thinking.”
4. Recognise progress, not just talent
If you only praise the “naturally talented” employees, you’ll create a fixed-mindset culture. If you praise people who improve quickly or who run experiments, you’ll create a learning culture.
People respond to what you reward — not what you write in your job descriptions.
5. Introduce an Issue Log
In startups this doesn’t need to be formal. A simple shared doc works, as long as the goal is compound learning.
6. Give people ownership early
People grow fastest when they own outcomes, not tasks. Give someone a small problem and let them solve it. Resist the urge to over-manage. The founders who retain the most talented people are the ones who let them stretch.
If you want employees who think like founders, you have to treat them like founders.
7. Be clear with expectations from day one
If you want a team that learns fast, say so. Tell new hires the truth about startup chaos. Explain that they’ll have to figure things out. Tell them that making mistakes is expected. Frame learning as part of the job.
New people rise to whatever bar you set.
8. Create psychological safety
Psychological safety isn’t about being nice. It’s making it safe for people to say what’s true. If someone can say, “This project isn't working,” without fear, you’ll catch problems earlier. If people can disagree openly, you’ll get better decisions.
This is one of the least glamorous but most powerful parts of a growth-mindset culture.
How founders can shift to a growth mindset
Founders often think they already have a growth mindset. Many don’t. They confuse confidence with growth. A growth mindset is not thinking you’re good. It’s thinking you can get better.
Here’s how founders accidentally drift into a fixed mindset:
- They get attached to their early ideas
- They fear looking inexperienced
- They try to appear “in control”
- They avoid asking dumb questions
- They hire people but don’t trust them
- They avoid feedback because it feels like failure
The dangerous thing about fixed mindset in founders is that employees mirror it. If you’re afraid of being wrong, your team will be too.
The fastest way to create a growth-mindset culture is to model one.
- Admit when you don’t know something.
- Change your mind publicly.
- Reward people who challenge your thinking.
- Show that learning beats ego.
That will push you over the hump and through to the other side.
Final thoughts
Most startups die because they stop learning faster than their competitors. Someone else figures something out – a better model, a better product insight, a better distribution channel – and your team is still debating last month’s plan.
A team with a growth mindset can survive more chaos. They can ship faster. They can recover from mistakes. They can adapt their plans instead of doubling down on the wrong one. They create more surface area for luck to operate.
Startups are essentially machines for learning under pressure. The better your team can learn, the more shots you get before time runs out.
