The starting point
A founder usually arrives with the hardest part already done. They know who the product is for, what those people are trying to get done, and they have often been doing it for a few early customers by hand, with spreadsheets, shared inboxes and a lot of their own time. What they do not have is software, and often no one in-house to build it.
The constraint is rarely ambition. It is choosing a first release small enough to build in a few months and complete enough that customers will pay for it, then building it in a way the founder can keep changing once they learn what customers actually use.
