On the Urgency to Build
The right ideas, executed with velocity, will define the next century.
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”
— General George S. Patton
The world doesn’t need more planning.
It needs more building.
Not someday.
Not when the markets calm.
Not after your deck is perfect.
Now.
We are living in a moment of compounding risk and compounding opportunity:
AI is accelerating beyond our ability to govern it.
Climate systems are fracturing in real time.
Public institutions are losing coherence.
Civilization is demanding new operating systems—fast.
We’re at a moment in time where courageous execution is needed.
But urgency without clarity is just noise.
If you want to build something that matters, you need to think deeply and act rapidly.
And there’s a framework for that.
Urgency is an advantage—When paired with the right idea
In a world that is uncertain, many people freeze.
We over-research.
We over-consume.
We wait for conditions to be perfect.
But the founders who shape the future don’t wait for the fog to clear.
They move through it.
They don’t move because they’re reckless.
They move because they can’t afford not to.
Sam Altman understood that when he helped start OpenAI, before most people even took AGI seriously.
It’s what Melanie Perkins embodied when she built the first version of Canva while still in university, without a product, without funding, without asking permission.
But they didn’t move blindly.
They moved based on ideas rooted in a deep, irreversible insight.
Finding ideas worth building
Mike Maples, co-founder of venture capital firm Floodgate, think of these ideas as being so bold and inevitable that while seemed contrarian at the start, ended up feeling obvious in hindsight.
In a conversation with Lenny Rachitsky, he laid out a compelling framework for founders trying to decide: Is this the thing I should move fast on?
Here’s the distilled version:
1. Does it feel like a breakthrough insight?
Something the world hasn’t fully realized yet, but will seem obvious in five years.
2. Is there a future where this idea seems inevitable?
Can you imagine it from that future and make the case that this has to exist?
3. Is it what he calls a “why now” idea?
Something that wasn’t possible before is now possible due to a shift—technological, social, regulatory, or economic.
4. Does it have exponential upside?
If it works, does it change the game, not just make an incremental improvement?
If your answer is yes to these, then your next move is simple:
Build with urgency.
What’s coming won’t wait
If you’re working on anything that touches:
AI alignment and agentic infrastructure
Fusion, storage, and grid resilience
Democracy tech and decentralized governance
Biotech, longevity, and biosecurity
Food and water systems
Reproductive science and family innovation
Vocational education and future-of-work platforms
Then urgency is existential, not optional.
These are the frontlines of the next century, and if we don’t build the right systems fast, the wrong systems will win by default.
The myth of perfect timing
You’ve heard it before: Wait until the time is right.
But the time is never right.
If you’d waited for macro conditions to stabilize:
Sam Altman wouldv’e missed the window to build OpenAI.
Dylan Field wouldv’e never launched Figma.
Elon Musk wouldn’t have funded Tesla.
In his It’s Time to Build piece, Marc Andreessen eluded to the idea that in a crisis, the world rewires itself. And the builders build new things.
And so, if you're watching the world rewire—and still waiting to make your move—you’re already behind.
Urgency is not haste
Urgency is not about panic.
It’s about prioritizing velocity over perfection.
It’s:
Prototyping instead of polishing
Publishing your insight before it’s “done”
Talking to your first 10 users before hiring a GTM lead
Running the experiment today, not writing a pitch deck for next month
Richard Branson didn’t launch Virgin with a clear roadmap.
He launched it with a bet and a wild belief that something better was possible.
The early builders of Stripe, Notion, and Khan Academy didn’t move rapidly because they were reckless. They moved rapidly because the moment demanded it.
What urgent builders do differently
If you want to build like your time is limited, here’s a mindset to consider:
Start with an irreversible insight.
What do you believe that, once seen, cannot be unseen?
Backcast from the future.
What will people thank you for having built five years from now?
Bias for visible momentum.
Each week: a prototype, a user win, a demo, a shipped update. Proof beats promise.
Think scale—but act locally.
Big ideas start small. Go deep before you go wide.
Ship before you’re comfortable.
If it feels perfect, you’re late.
The fundamental difference between dreamers and builders?
Builders are impatient enough to start—and disciplined enough to keep going.
What to do if you’re sitting on a big idea
Ask yourself:
Does this idea solve a civilization-scale problem?
How rapidly can I build a version of it?
In 10 years, Will I regret not building it?
If the answers are “yes”: move.
You don’t need:
A term sheet
A media strategy
A cohort of approval
You need:
One user who needs it
One public act of building
One signal that’s real
Build like time is running out
Because it is.
We are at an inflection point where the window for impact is shrinking, not because the problems are going away, but because the systems are hardening.
If you want a voice in what happens next, a piece of the action and the outcome, then you must move while the future is still malleable.
This is the urgency to build. For your own success, but more importantly, for the reinvention of the systems that shape and move the world around us.
History doesn’t remember who had the best plan.
It remembers who showed up when it mattered most.
Thanks for reading,
Yon
👋 Hello! My mission with Beyond with Yon is to ignite awareness, inspire dialogue, and drive innovation to tackle humanity's greatest existential challenges. Join me on the journey to unf**ck the future and transform our world.
Connect with me on Linkedin and X.
AI assistants were used to help research and edit this essay.