021

The small hard mountain: the local maximum trap

Climb the mountain. Reach the summit. This one was long. Now the view opens. There is a peak twice as high a few valleys away. 

We often fall into this trap with our startups or careers. We optimize on the hill we happen to be standing on – the local maximum – never realizing it is not the global maximum. We compete without reservations, we win hard battles, realizing too late that the payoff was capped from the beginning. The real mountain was somewhere else. 

I’ve seen brilliant founders fall into this trap, and lived it myself. Kimi is clearly making history on a global stage. Lazada sold to Alibaba for ~$3B just four years after we incubated it. On the other side, I’ve co-founded two startups that achieved some outcomes – funding, revenue, YC, exit, etc – but on much smaller scale. From the inside, both mountains can feel surprisingly similar: talent, competition, hard work, and real wins. The difference is the ceiling. 

The local max trap is surprisingly dangerous. We often can’t tell which mountain we’re on, yet commit with the same intensity, and years can pass before we realize it. This trap first convinces us we’re playing a global game, then makes it hard to leave. In fact, the most dangerous mountain is not the one you are failing to climb, but the mediocre one you are successfully climbing. Failure gives you a reason to reconsider, while mediocre success makes us stay. 

This trap is particularly effective for three reasons: (1) Effort ≠ Opportunity. Exceptional peers (often as good as in a global max), fierce competition, and relentless work can make the small mountain feel significant. A difficult climb doesn’t mean you’re climbing the right mountain. Difficulty is not evidence of opportunity. (2) The reward trap: becoming a big fish in a small pond is immediately rewarding and can become addictive. (3) The trap gets stronger as you improve. You build expertise, network, and reputation around the local game. Your very competence becomes the reason to stay. What made you successful in the local game can eventually become the liability that keeps you there. 

This creates a dangerous confusion between two questions: “Is this working?” and “Is this worth working on?”. Current success is evidence that you can climb the mountain. It is not evidence that you should keep climbing it. 

The local max trap carries two main risks: lost time and reduced ambition. Founders spend too much time on the wrong mountain without realizing it. And success on a local max can reshape our mindset and lower our ambition, with permanent impact.

Ultimately, the hardest part is not climbing harder. It is having the courage to “face reality as it is not as it was or as you wish it to be”, ask yourself the hard questions and fight the entropy of ambition when winning on a local maximum. We spend enormous energy asking how to climb faster and better, when the more important question is whether we should still be climbing it at all. If it is the right mountain, climb without hesitation. If it isn’t, the courage is not to climb harder. It is to turn around.