Startup founders are often portrayed as rational strategists. But what if their real superpower isn’t strategy? What if it’s the ability to spot a sliver of feedback, an offhand comment, or a half-formed insight and sense the opportunity buried within? In other words, what if it’s their intuition, not just a hunch, but a sharpened skill that helps them act quickly and confidently amid uncertainty.
Intuition is an inner knowing born from the subconscious synthesis of experience, subtle cues, and pattern recognition. Intuition is not born from conscious reasoning. Intuition and gut instinct are related, but distinct. While gut instinct is visceral and emotional and often tied to danger or urgency, intuition is a felt sense grounded in accumulated knowledge and subconscious cues.
Startups operate in messy, unpredictable environments. There’s rarely perfect data. Benchmarks often don’t exist. Conventional playbooks break down.
When startups need to move fast, when the map is incomplete and the data’s a blur, intuition becomes a strategic asset. It allows founders to perceive weak signals and act before others even notice them. Entrepreneurs, in many ways, are professional instinct-followers. They “thin-slice” and make split-second judgments based on slivers of memory, observation, and context.
Intuition doesn’t replace intelligence. It complements it. In early stages, intuition is vital to bridging the gap between what’s known and what’s possible, guiding decisions when the map hasn’t been drawn yet.
Intuition also plays a role in creation, not just optimization. Startups are built on disruption. They need nonlinear thinking and the courage to move on something unconventional. In that space, intuition enables leaps into new spaces that instinctively “feel right.”
This isn’t just theory. Some of the most iconic founders made their boldest moves through intuition. Steve Jobs didn’t poll users before launching the iPhone. Reed Hastings took a bold bet on streaming before it was mainstream. Howard Schultz envisioned Starbucks not based on market data, but rather based on something he felt in Milan cafés. It was his intuition about what Americans were craving: connection and community.
Whitney Wolfe Herd sensed women’s emotional need for more control in dating. Bumble wasn’t born from traditional research. It emerged from a gut-level understanding of the problem space. Critics doubted it would succeed. She trusted her market read and reshaped an entire category.
These weren’t lucky guesses. They were intuition, refined through experience, in action.
Intuition is a powerful tool but not one to follow blindly. It has limitations. The same subconscious processes that produce brilliant insights can also produce bias, overconfidence, and faulty assumptions.
Daniel Kahneman cautioned in Thinking, Fast and Slow that intuitive judgments are often cognitive illusions, stories we invent to make sense of limited information, mistaking them for truth. Malcolm Gladwell echoed this in Blink, showing how especially under stress, intuition can misfire.
Intuition is most trustworthy when it’s grounded in lived experience, shaped by time spent deeply engaged in the problem space, and informed by the pattern recognition that comes from both success and failure. A designer who’s launched 100 products has a different kind of intuition than someone shipping their first. Even so, intuition should be a signal—not a conclusion.
Great founders treat intuition as a hypothesis generator. Like Amazon, they trust their hunches but validate them with experiments.
Still, intuition isn’t foolproof. The danger is not intuition itself, but relying on it uncritically, especially when the stakes are high, data is scarce, and emotions are running hot. That’s a fine line for founders, who often operate precisely in this space. It’s also when certainty can be most seductive and wrong.
- What led me to this conclusion—and how would I know I’m right?
- When has a similar hunch helped—or misled—me in the past?
- What’s my internal narrative here? Am I too invested in being right?
- What’s the potential cost of being wrong?
- How can I test this quickly?
One founder I’ve worked with was about to launch a product with a key feature that his engineers thought was too simple. Despite their pushback, after reflecting on what was driving his conviction, he realized his gut was well-grounded in his observations of consumer needs. That feature became a key differentiator and a breakout success.
When cultivated, checked, and balanced, intuition delivers real advantages: speed, creativity, and bold action in the face of ambiguity.
Intuition also plays a role in timing. As many investors have observed, great founders don’t just spot a trend. They feel the moment. They don’t launch when they are ready. They launch when the market is.
In the end, intuition isn’t magic. It’s a skill. Like musicians, firefighters, and athletes, founders develop it through repetition, reflection, and feedback. It’s built by living the questions, listening to gut-level hunches, and checking those instincts with data and experience.
| About Orly Maravankin | About Edge Consulting |
| Orly Maravankin is an executive coach and global consultant with 25 years of experience across various industries. A member of the International Coach Federation, she specializes in leadership development, executive coaching, and fostering high-performing work environments. Drawing from her expertise in business, brain-based coaching, mindfulness, and psychology, Orly empowers leaders to manage triggers, build resilience, and lead with emotional intelligence, helping them thrive in today’s dynamic business landscape. | Edge Consulting is a coaching and consulting firm specializing in executive coaching and leadership development. They help leaders and organizations thrive in complex environments and lead with purpose. Founded by former business executives with over 20 years of experience, the team understands the unique pressures today’s leaders face. They believe success requires navigating complexity, managing rapid change, and fostering inclusive, resilient cultures. Drawing on deep leadership experience and a range of coaching modalities, they use proven methods to drive growth. Their approach helps leaders focus, adapt, and build lasting capacity. Edge Consulting partners with organizations of all sizes, from Fortune 500s to startups and non-profits. The result is stronger leaders who deliver meaningful impact. |
