Hey NEW founders: What "Do things that don't scale" really means (I will not promote)

I've encountered this a few times this week with founders trying to scale prematurely or doing the right things in the wrong order. The main culprit is building new features when they don't have any users or enough of them to know whether it's worth it or not. Now, before all you experienced and expert veteran founders jump all over me saying, "Duh," everybody knows this. I can also say that funded founders make the exact same mistakes, made worse by the fact they have access to capital and try to work on everything at once. I know founders that have raised millions and shut down two years later or firesale the assets. It's easy to fall into this trap because we're all told that product-market fit is the goal, but there are dozens of factors that go into achieving PMF. Then we hear the YC advice, "Do things that don't scale," and nod, fundamentally understanding the crux of it, but then go off and do all the wrong things for the right reasons. Yes, doing things that don't scale first starts off with forgetting about automation and the millionth customer. It's about doing things manually and getting in front of a customer using founder-led sales before burning cash to reach customers "at scale." I argue that if more new founders were forced to do founder-led sales before trying anything else, they'd have a much better chance of success. But doing things that don't scale also involves the stuff others are NOT willing to do. These are the underserved, underrepresented, and underestimated gaps that your competition ignores. These are the things that others say you're crazy for even trying because nobody would ever buy it. Everybody thinks scale is a good idea. That's a no-brainer. But when everybody is thinking that way, you end up in a bloody red ocean (Blue Ocean Theory) and are at the mercy of Power Law (when the majority of the value is driven by a very small minority). For example, the number of "AI Agent" pitches that cross my desk now is equivalent to how many "We're the blockchain and NFTs for X industry" ventures I saw a few years back. The rewards will be great, but so will the number of failures. AI-washing is alive and well, and it will burst like every other trendy bubble. I conduct idea validation and customer discovery daily. And when someone tells me my idea is stupid or the problem is too hard to solve, that's when I perk up. If I'm willing to do the thing that doesn't "scale" and fly under the radar, I have a much better chance of finding the blue ocean. Just as long as the number of people with that problem is big enough, investors love hearing about it. Let me give you an example of success: I interviewed a founder who thought shipping wine in bottles was a pain. So he set out to ship wine in cardboard boxes (not bottles in cardboard, but literally wine in a box). His friend literally told him he was crazy. But he went all in and worked on shipping ONE box of wine to see if it was possible. The prototype was NOT pretty. Not to mention an affront to all the classic industry types. He had to find a vineyard to play ball when others rejected him. The rest was history. His first round of funding was oversubscribed, and his initial naysayers were the first to invest. He even named it "Really Good Boxed Wine." I've got a lot of other stories like this. Another founder we worked with secured a million dollars in funding and a $100 million line of credit. He turned down more money. All before a single line of code (he did have a wireframe). How? He picked a very hard problem and personally sold the solution by picking up the phone to some very large clients and putting their logos on his pitch deck. Doing things that don't scale is a willingness to be contrarian. The statement itself is contrarian because everybody always defaults to scale first (eventually, yes, scale is necessary, I get it). It's a willingness to be unpopular and do the hard things without being deterred by people's opinions. I'm sure there are plenty of founders here in the suck right now doing this. You're not worrying about how to get investors first to scale, but willing to prove it and make revenue first. I think we need to hear more of your stories so new founders focus on the right things.