Dear Team,
I'm writing this because over the past few weeks, various situations have overlapped, leaving me repeatedly feeling helpless, and I've come to realize that I may have been the most cynical person on the team.
Exhausting discussions involving multiple stakeholders, frustrating decision-making processes, a world changing by the day while I find myself spinning in place despite being ready to move forward—unable to actually progress. I think most of you have probably had similar thoughts while working.
On top of this comes the inherent difficulty of our work: creating "tools for humans" in workflows where human intervention is converging toward zero. I call this work a polyfill for some future that will come, and I still believe that quickly providing the tools and interfaces needed right now between humans and AI is the answer—not just for us, but for all startups. That belief itself remains unshaken. I also have no disagreement that the products we're building have exciting goals and vision. It's also why I'm still here.
Nevertheless, the reality of AI replacing human roles one by one at an incredibly fast pace hits me with a different kind of weight. Questions like "What's the point of building this anyway? Competing products will flood the market in a few months" and "Is it meaningful to spend this much cost to build faster and better than others?" keep circling in my head. When I responded to "we need to solve problems the market won't solve" with "there's no problem the market won't solve," it was probably the same sentiment. (To be precise, I meant "product differentiation alone makes it difficult to justify choosing 'build' over 'buy,'" but I acknowledge there was cynicism underlying those words.)
A mix of resentment, helplessness, fear, and other emotions led me to discover that I've been approaching things with a cynical attitude in just a few short months.
The Problem with Cynicism
The biggest problem with cynicism is that it feels like insight. Because cynicism takes the stance of looking down at situations from a distance, it appears shrewd both to oneself and to others. But structurally, cynicism isn't insight—it's a defense mechanism. It's a strategy to avoid disappointment by lowering expectations in advance, and a strategy to avoid responsibility for failure by withdrawing effort beforehand. Insight creates the next action, but cynicism stops the next action. I think this is the clearest criterion that separates the two.
The second problem is that cynicism lowers the team's baseline. One person's cynicism changes the air in the meeting room, and that changed air raises the threshold for others to speak up. In a meeting where someone has said "it won't work anyway," proposing a new attempt requires more courage than before. Cynicism becomes not just an individual attitude, but an environmental variable for the team.
Third, cynicism is self-fulfilling. A cynical person predicts failure, reduces their total effort according to that prediction, and consequently creates failure. Then they use that failure as evidence of their insight. Once this loop starts, it's hard to break.
Self-fulfilling cynicism is particularly fatal in the work we do. Creating new tools in areas where there are no right answers yet requires conviction as raw material. Without the belief that "this will be meaningful," there's no reason to spend time on details, and products without details become indistinguishable from what someone else made. In the AI era, the proposition that "someone will make it in a few days anyway" might be true. However, the moment we leap from this proposition to the conclusion that "therefore we don't need to make it," that space gets occupied by someone else who doesn't accept the same proposition. Cynicism can start from accurate observation, but the moment it's used as a basis for action, it always produces wrong conclusions.
We Should
First, let's distinguish between criticism and cynicism. Criticism is an act of engaging with the subject, but cynicism is an act of withdrawing from it. If the decision-making process is frustrating, talking about how to change it is criticism, but saying "it won't change anyway" is cynicism. The two may look similar, but their impact on the team is opposite. I hope everyone will check which side they're on. I'll start with myself.
Next, let's change our own attitude before demanding it from others. Saying "I wish other people were more proactive" is itself a form of cynicism. Team atmosphere needs someone to create it first for it to change, and there's no reason that someone can't be you.
Finally, I propose one question to ask yourself when cynicism arises: "If I truly believed this work was meaningful, what would I do right now?" If the answer to this question differs from what you're currently doing, that difference is the space cynicism has occupied.
We came this far because we believed what we're building is meaningful. I know there are enough reasons for that belief to waver. But wavering and letting go are different things. You can regain your grip when things waver, and that work can only be done one person at a time.
Now that AI is fundamentally rewriting workflows and various paradigms, cynicism and helplessness might be natural reactions. It's a world where yesterday's right answer becomes today's wrong answer, and no one can guarantee what the landscape will look like in a few months. Even so, the experience of building something during such times and the confusion we're experiencing now isn't a cost—it's an asset that only those who pass through this period can have. What's built when the ground is shaking remains even after the ground hardens. And those who built it become the people who can move first when the next ground starts shaking. This is why I'm still deeply committed to this work.
Team, let's drop the cynicism. I'll start with myself.