Entrepreneurs and Imposter Syndrome

The Easiest Way to Spot an Entrepreneur with Imposter Syndrome: They Don’t Have Revenue

Some founders will drone on and on telling you how “innovative” they are. They highlight their patents, their clever ideas, their alma mater from decades ago. But without customers and cash flow, that’s just posturing. Real innovation is not what you dream up in the lab—it’s what you prove in the market.

Imposter Syndrome in Entrepreneurs

Imposter syndrome shows up when entrepreneurs hide behind technical accomplishments instead of facing the marketplace. They’ll talk endlessly about their innovations, but they’re terrified to build a few units, throw them in the back of the truck, and go sell them at a jobsite. That takes courage. And the ones who avoid it? They want to “raise money” so they can “hire a sales team” or “pay a marketing agency.” In reality, they’re just afraid of rejection.

Imposter syndrome for entrepreneurs isn’t just a feeling of self-doubt. It’s an avoidance behavior: staying in the lab, talking about patents, and skipping the hardest part of entrepreneurship—selling.

Rejection as Fuel, Not Fear

Selling a product means exposing yourself to rejection. It’s like asking someone to the 6th grade dance – you might get a “no,” and that sting can feel unbearable. But rejection is the strongest signal an entrepreneur can receive. It tells you more than success does.

• The best rejection is when someone explains why your product doesn’t fit their needs.
• The worst rejection is silence—when they ghost you, walk past your shelf, or pass on your pitch without feedback.

Good entrepreneurs reframe rejection as fuel, not fear. They ask:

• Did we define the customer’s pain point correctly?
• Are we selling to the right people?
• Do they have the problem, but our solution misses the mark?
• Did we show clearly how the problem is solved?
• Are we too early or too late?

Rejection, handled well, drives sharper innovation.

Apply Creativity Where It Counts

Here’s the irony: the same mental horsepower that cracked a technical challenge can just as easily crack a sales challenge. Identifying your customer, reaching them, and convincing them is a problem set like any other. The difference is that the feedback loop comes from the market instead of the lab.

• Marketing: It’s about finding who cares. You’re mapping a landscape, no different than exploring the physics of your invention. What keywords do they search for? What trade shows do they attend? Who influences their buying decisions?
• Sales: It’s about framing your invention as a solution to their problem. Forget the elegance of your algorithm or the efficiency of your design. All the customer wants to know is: does this make my life better, cheaper, faster, or easier?
• Execution: Your patents, your tech, your data—they only matter if they’re part of a machine that delivers value repeatedly. That machine is the business.

If you had real, true “creativity,” you would be able to apply that skillset in all these situations.

The Trap of Endless Tinkering

Too many startups collapse into what I call the “endless science project.” There’s always one more feature to add, one more prototype to test, one more patent to file. Meanwhile, the market moves on. Competitors ship. Customers buy. And the inventor is left with a beautiful piece of technology nobody wants.

That’s imposter syndrome at work: tinkering instead of selling.

A Better Path

The founders who succeed are the ones who stop hiding in the lab and start selling. They treat business challenges as puzzles to solve, not inconveniences to avoid. I’ve seen it firsthand: when an engineer-founder finally leans into sales, things change quickly. Once they hear directly from customers and learn what really matters, the product gets sharper, the value proposition gets clearer, and revenue starts flowing.

And here’s the secret: the best patents are always yet to come. With every sales call and every rejection, you gather more insight into the customer. That knowledge fuels the next real innovation. A patent is worth filing only when it captures the reason customers actually buy—not just the “big idea” you sketched on a napkin.

Patents That Matter

My mantra with entrepreneurs is simple: I don’t want a patent on the “big idea.” I want a patent on the reason why someone buys your product. Patents tied to real customer demand are infinitely more valuable than ones written around untested concepts. The outcome in the customer’s eyes is what really matters, not the clever trick that got you there.

People don’t want a 1/4 inch drill; they want a 1/4 inch hole. Your patent should protect the hole—not the drill.

The Bottom Line

Being an innovator isn’t just about inventing technology. It’s about building a company. If you’re a founder-inventor, your creativity isn’t finished once the patent is filed. That’s where it begins. Apply your problem-solving skills to marketing and sales with the same intensity you applied to your invention. Because the true test of your innovation isn’t what you built—it’s whether you can sell it. And if you avoid that challenge, you’re not just failing at sales—you’re proving your imposter syndrome is real.