Issue #3: The signals that actually matter.
What real demand looks like long before success is evident.
In Issue #2, I concluded with an important truth:
Most of the signals people rely on to judge progress are misleading.Activity. Interest. Pilots. Positive conversations. Narratives of early traction. Each may seem convincing, yet all can be misleading.
Once this becomes clear, a predictable pattern often follows.
Teams rarely change direction immediately. They do not stop. They do not suddenly become more disciplined. They hesitate.
This leaves two questions:
If existing signals are unreliable, what should teams focus on instead?
How can progress continue without substituting one set of weak signals for another?
At this stage, teams often seek additional information. More data. More validation. More conversations.
This is not to clarify the decision, but to delay making it. The problem is rarely a lack of signals. The problem is a lack of signal strength.
This issue focuses on recognising that distinction and will guide you through how to differentiate among signals as you decide what matters most. Before exploring the types of signals, it’s important to understand why typical responses to early uncertainty often fall short.
Not all signals are equal.
A common mistake among founders, venture builders, and corporate innovation teams is treating all signals as equally significant. They are not.
Some signals are noisy, some are fragile and some exist only while attention is actively applied to them. Others however compound.
The strongest signals rarely appear clearly. They do not arrive with certainty and often seem unremarkable at first. On their own, they may not feel decisive. What distinguishes them is what happens next.
They reappear.They reinforce each other.They begin to narrow the range of reasonable options.Over time, they start to force decisions even when no one is explicitly pushing for one. Some signals need constant explanation. Others do not. Most teams do not miss this because they are not paying attention. This occurs because early signals often feel urgent to those closely involved.
Why “more data” is rarely the answer?
When confidence in existing signals erodes, the instinctive response is measurement. I have observed multiplying dashboards, perpetual pilot extensions and repeating research or discovery loops.The work becomes busy, structured and defensible.
However, it often the venture begins to feel stagnant. There are more updates, but fewer decisions. More evidence, but no change in direction. More activity, without a corresponding shift in commitment.
This is often described as rigour. In practice, there is usually hesitation.
Weak signals benefit from ambiguity. They survive when interpretation remains optional, and decisions can be deferred.
Alternatively, strong signals behave differently, they will often have an impact on the decision to be made. They reduce ambiguity. They make trade-offs harder to avoid. They narrow the space between “interesting” and “necessary.”
The question is not whether you have signals. It is whether those signals are compounding or quietly fading.
Compounding vs decaying signals
The difference between weak and strong signals rarely shows up in a single moment. It happens up over time.
Decaying signals tend to remain isolated and require repeated explanation. Their urgency fades unless someone actively sustains it. When attention shifts, they disappear.
Compounding signals behave differently. They resurface without effort. They create secondary effects. They start interacting with other parts of the system.
Often, the distinction becomes clear only in retrospect, when it is evident that some signals required ongoing support to remain visible, while others persisted independently.
This is not about optimism or skepticism.
It is about accumulation.
What real demand looks like in the wild?
This issue is not about tools, steps, or validation techniques. It is about learning to observe what is already occurring.
Across startups, spin-outs, and corporate innovation programs, a small number of patterns recur where real demand exists, long before success is obvious.
Behaviour that costs something
Real demand shows up where people are already paying a price.
For founders, that price is often personal or financial. Time is lost. Manual workarounds persist. Resources are committed earlier than they feel comfortable. People accept inconvenience rather than revert to the status quo.
For corporate innovation leaders, the currency is different. The cost is organisational.
Exceptions are made. Standard pathways are bypassed and work happens unofficially because the alternative is worse. Leaders tolerate risk they would normally deflect.
This is often uncomfortable to observe, particularly when it becomes clear that people are solving the problem independently rather than due to your involvement.
Where people consistently pay a price, demand is rarely theoretical.
Workarounds that scale socially
One workaround proves very little. The same workaround appearing independently across customers, teams, or parts of an organisation is a different signal.
For founders, this repetition is usually external: similar spreadsheets, parallel hacks, familiar patterns emerging across different buyers.
Inside large organisations, repetition is often hidden. The same problem is solved badly in multiple places. Shadow systems appear and local fixes replicate quietly because no one is rewarded for surfacing them.
When many people independently arrive at the same imperfect solution, the underlying problem is usually real.
Escalation without prompting
Weak signals need chasing. Strong signals escalate on their own.
For founders, escalation often moves outward. Introductions happen without asking. Conversations expand. Procurement or finance enters earlier than expected. Questions begin to imply consequences rather than curiosity.
Inside organisations, escalation moves upward. Senior leaders ask how this fits with strategy. Risk and compliance surface implications. Ownership becomes unclear.
At this stage, the situation often feels less contained.
For founders, escalation creates opportunity.
For corporates, it creates accountability.
In both cases, it signals that the work is no longer optional.
Decisions forced by success
Positive outcomes are often mistaken for strong signals.
A pilot that performs well but allows everyone to defer a “buy or do not buy” decision is weak. A prototype that works but doesn’t challenge an existing process is weak.
Strong signals create consequences.
For founders, success collapses optionality. Pricing must be set, contracts negotiated and resources are reallocated.
For corporate innovation teams, success creates friction. Existing systems are challenged. Ownership becomes contested. Funding conversations move out of innovation budgets and into the business.
Within organisations, a lack of friction following success is often a warning sign.
Compression of time
One of the most reliable indicators of real demand is what happens over time.
For founders, this often shows up as shortened cycles. Decisions happen faster and follow-ups occur without chasing.
Inside organisations, time compression looks different. Deadlines appear suddenly. Executive updates are pulled forward. Decisions that were expected later become uncomfortable to delay.
This is not urgency for its own sake. It is exposure. When time compresses within a system, it is usually because delay has become risky.
The quiet pressure of real demand
At this point, many teams begin to sense a shift, even if they struggle to articulate it. Nothing dramatic has happened and there is no single breakthrough moment.
Yet, continuing as before begins to feel misaligned.
The work still moves forward, but with less effort. Certain conversations keep resurfacing and certain questions refuse to stay contained.
At the same time, other things fade.
Updates that once felt important stop changing anything. New information no longer alters the picture. Momentum appears to be assumed rather than actively generated.
At this stage, experienced teams often realise how much they have relied on narrative rather than evidence.
Strong signals do not demand attention. They create pressure.
They do not ask to be believed. They make delays harder to justify.
Strong signals accumulate, driving necessary decisions and making delays hard to justify. Weak signals require explanation, fade without support, and produce activity without real progress.
Recognise which type you have prioritise compounding signals, act decisively, and avoid relying on plausibility alone. The key is to focus on signals that reinforce themselves, force decisions, and compress time. These are the indicators of real demand.
A decision fork in the road.
This is usually the moment teams underestimate. This is not due to subtlety, but rather because it is inconvenient.
By the time you reach this point, you rarely lack information. What is often missing is the self-granted permission to act on what the signals already indicate.
The decision point does not announce itself. There is no sudden deadline or failure. Instead, it becomes clear that nothing new is emerging.
Conversations repeat.
The same signals and justification are repeatedly cited.
The same explanations are repeated to justify maintaining the current course.
At this stage, most teams do not continue because they believe the idea is right.
They continue because the idea is still plausible.
Plausibility sustains the narrative. It keeps options open and makes delay appear responsible rather than evasive. But plausibility is not momentum.
The decision point is where you determine whether you are responding to compounding evidence or maintaining decaying justification.
When signals compound, continuation becomes structurally obvious. Venture builds should be able to observe, resources shifts, clearer ownership and trade-offs being accepted rather than debated. Continuing may not feel easy, but it feels necessary.
When signals decay, something else happens. The work continues, but the pressure disappears. Energy is maintained through explanation rather than through tangible consequences. Progress becomes something described rather than experienced.
This is where many capable teams linger.
Not because they are careless.Not because they lack discipline.But because stopping feels disproportionate when nothing has failed.Walking away from a failing idea is straightforward. It is much more difficult to walk away from a good idea supported by weak signals. That is why this fork matters.
It is not a test of optimism.It is not a test of resilience.It is a test of whether you are willing to treat the absence of momentum as meaningful information.For founders, delaying this decision quietly consumes runway and credibility.
For corporate innovation leaders, it consumes political capital and organisational patience.
In both cases, the cost is real, though deferred.
The decision fork is not able certainty. It is about recognising when continuing no longer improves the quality of your information. Once you reach this point, continued activity is no longer a neutral choice.
It is a choice.
Let’s execute
This is not a growth exercise.
It is a recognition exercise.
This process is more challenging than it appears, not due to complexity, but because it eliminates places to hide.
Set aside an hour to complete this exercise independently.
List the signals you are currently relying on.
For each, ask yourself the following:
Has this signal strengthened or weakened over time?
Did it escalate without prompting, or require chasing?
Did it force a decision, or allow deferral?
Did time compress or stretch?
Now group them into two columns:
Compounding
Decaying
Do not debate the categories.
If you need to justify why a signal belongs in the first column, it likely does not.
Finally, answer one question honestly:
If you removed all decaying signals, would you still continue?
This exercise is intentionally designed to be uncomfortable.
It quietly distinguishes those building genuine progress from those simply maintaining activity.
A closing thought
Strong signals do not guarantee success.
Weak signals almost guarantee drift.
The role of a venture operator, founder, or corporate innovation leader is not to create artificial confidence. It is to interpret evidence and make timely decisions.
Most people can generate activity.Fewer can recognise momentum.Very few are willing to act when signals indicate it is time to stop.Whats coming next? The next issue will look to address the decision most teams avoid. Not when the idea fails, that part is straightforward. When the idea remains plausible, work continues, but the signals do not compound.
It will examine:
Why teams stay longer than they should?
What discipline looks like in practice, without becoming performative?
How to disengage without turning it into a personal narrative that requires justification?
Because the ability to stop is not a personality trait. It is an operating capability.
This series reflects patterns observed across startups, corporates, and research-led ventures, not a checklist to be blindly followed.