The missiles are the destination

By Garrett Winder, 28 Oct 2025

One of my uncommon enjoyments is the work that happens right in the middle of a big problem that needs to be solved, or even a nosedive. A calmness kicks in, the path gets clearer and I can usually tunnel vision my way through to course correction.

I used to think this was special, but it’s really not.

As it happens, this is a requirement of the job. Especially for founders and leaders, and especially for founders and leaders in the tech industry.

The missiles are the destination.

I was watching an interview recently between David Senra and Brad Jacobs, a billionaire businessman, talking about the perspective of “I’ve got too many problems to deal with” v.s. “the more problems I solve the more value I create”. That’s a summary, but you can see the original here:

“All day long, you have incoming missiles. You have great stuff too, but in between that is punches to the face. And if you’re going to get beaten up by that, you’re not going to be successful, and secondly, you’re not going to be happy.” —Brad Jacobs pic.twitter.com/IwExa8gNER

— David Senra (@davidsenra) October 28, 2025

Two owners of smaller shops recently told me similar advice to the following that they had been given:

“You just have to find the magic bullet and then X will happen.”

I’ve looked for that, on and off, for a long time and wasted a lot of money trying, but eventually came to the conclusion that it’s a million pretty good decisions over the course of a longer-than-expected period of time that mostly sprouted into plants instead of weeds.

At some point I heard or read that the gift of solving a problem is that you get a new problem to solve, which is what Brad is saying above. That’s the magic bullet (except it’s definitely not magic and it’s much slower than a bullet).

The missiles are the destination.