Complaining doesn't help
Be quiet about the problem and loud about the fix
A few weeks ago, I ordered takeout from a small sandwich shop near my apartment.
When I got home and opened the bag, they’d given me the wrong order — turkey instead of tuna. It wasn’t a big deal, but I was tired, hungry, and the idea of going back felt annoying. So I sat there, scrolling through my phone, complaining in my head about how careless people were.
Ten minutes later, I realized I’d spent more time being irritated than it would’ve taken to just walk back and ask them to fix it.
That small moment stuck with me, because it’s the same trap I’ve seen inside almost every startup.
The scale is different, but the pattern is the same. Something doesn’t go your way, and instead of fixing it, you stew in the frustration. You talk about it, analyze it, repeat it. And before you know it, your energy is gone — spent not on the problem itself, but on the feeling of being wronged.
It’s not that complaining is irrational. It’s deeply human. The problem is that it feels productive to the point that it gives you the illusion that you’re doing something when you’re not.
Psychologists call it venting bias: the belief that expressing frustration helps us move on. But studies consistently show the opposite. One study found that venting actually increases negative emotion and impairs problem-solving. You feel better briefly, then worse, then stuck.
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That’s exactly how it works in building a business.
A team complains that a competitor copied their feature.
Another complains that users aren’t converting.
Another complains that investors don’t get their vision.
…
Each of these frustrations might be valid, but every minute spent talking about them without acting is a minute of momentum lost.
Momentum is fragile — especially in early stage of any business. Once you lose it, you can’t talk your way back into it. You only rebuild it by doing.
That’s the first reason complaining doesn’t help because it feels like motion, but it’s actually friction.
The turning point happens when frustration becomes a hypothesis.
Look at what happened with BeReal. When its viral moment cooled off, users filled social media with complaints: “the app is boring,” “it crashes,” “it’s not real anymore.” The company could’ve defended itself — and plenty of startups do — by arguing that users misunderstood the product’s purpose.
Instead, they went back to work. They tested new prompts, changed notification timings, experimented with private sharing features. They didn’t argue. They adjusted.
That difference — turning complaints into experiments — is what keeps a company alive after hype fades.
Most people treat complaints as statements of identity (“people don’t get us”) instead of as input (“how do we help people get us faster?”). But when you view every complaint as a potential test, you start learning again. The team moves from emotion to measurement. And measurement, not emotion, is what brings you closer to truth.
So if you must complain, complain with an experiment attached. Otherwise, it’s just noise.
The longer a team stays in the loop of complaint, the more it rewires how people see themselves.
Someone becomes the “realist” — always the first to spot what’s broken. At first, it seems useful. Later, it becomes their role.
I’ve seen teams where identifying problems became a form of status. Meetings turned into contests of pessimism — whoever pointed out the biggest flaw sounded the smartest. But when everyone competes to sound right, no one competes to fix anything.
That’s the silent cost of complaining:
It replaces accountability with commentary.
It rewards explanation over execution.
Over time, the company becomes a group of clever observers who can describe failure perfectly but can’t prevent it.
And once that mindset settles, even small wins stop feeling real. The culture turns self-conscious. Every idea is met with “yes, but,” every success dissected for flaws. Eventually, the team runs out of optimism — not because the idea was bad, but because they ran out of belief.
After the sandwich incident, I went back to the shop. The cashier apologized, swapped the order, and it was done. It took five minutes. Walking home, I thought about how many times I’ve done the same thing in work — spent hours complaining about something that could’ve been solved with one direct action.
Complaining doesn’t make you weak; it makes you still. And stillness, in a fast-moving world, is just a slower form of decline.
Startups, like people, don’t run out of ideas but run out of movement. And movement dies every time we spend energy explaining why something’s unfair instead of fixing what’s broken.
So if there’s one rule I’ve learned — from sandwiches, software, or startups — it’s this:
Be quiet about the problem and loud about the fix.
The world listens to results, not reasons.
What’s your experience with complaining?
Talk soon,
Gracie from What A Startup
This is a very powerful and true message!
Incredible text! Not only is it a great lesson for startups, but also for our everyday life!