Bear Market Brilliance: Building with Constraints & Thinking in Two Speeds

They say constraint is the enemy of ambition. But ask any founder who’s actually built something enduring and they’ll tell you the opposite: constraint is the mother of invention, the father of clarity, and the weird cousin who shows up at Thanksgiving and accidentally solves a $10B problem with duct tape and an expired AWS credit.

In the bear market, we meet this cousin often. And it turns out, he might be our best shot at greatness.

Let’s talk about two philosophies that have not just helped me survive entrepreneurship in a hyper-financialized, hyper-volatile space like crypto - but helped me build smarter, faster, and better than I ever could have in the sunshine and rainbows of a bull.

1. The Power of Constraint-Based Thinking (Especially When the Music Stops)

The bear is brutal. But it's also brutally clarifying.

It removes fluff. It deletes distractions. It reminds you you don’t have infinite runway, infinite attention, or infinite dev hours to chase every dopamine hit of a new L2 airdrop.

At first, that feels like limitation. But really, it’s liberation.

"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I will move the world."
- Archimedes

But Archimedes didn’t say, “Give me 72 levers, a VC deck, and a Discord bot.” He needed one good lever and a point of leverage. That’s constraint-based thinking. Fewer variables. Better outcomes.

In crypto, we often equate more money, more users, more attention, more speculation with better. But what if constraint isn’t the absence of resources, but the presence of focus?

Let’s take Apple in 1997. Near bankruptcy. Limited product line. They could’ve thrown spaghetti at the wall. Instead, they focused on four product quadrants. They imposed constraints. And from those constraints came iMac, then iPod, then iPhone. Constraints didn’t limit the outcome - they clarified the direction.

In the bear market, your roadmap is no longer a wish list. It’s a battlefield. You’re not allowed to solve problems with money, or noise, or hype. You have to solve them with creativity.

You can’t pay influencers to pump your numbers. You have to build something people actually want.

You can’t raise a $10M seed round from a16z off a figma mockup. You have to ship.

You can’t rely on airdrop meta. You have to design systems that work when no one’s watching.

And that’s exactly when the best stuff gets built.

2. Thinking Fast & Slow, Short & Long

Let’s talk duality.

Because founders love binary choices: long-term visionaries vs short-term hustlers. The “build for 10 years” crowd vs the “ship MVP in 48 hours” gang.

But the truth is, the great builders do both. They live in two time zones at once.

They think slowly, strategically about systems, moats, and defensibility. But they also move quickly, tactically on product, market entry, and iteration.

They hold paradox in their heads without losing their minds.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Great entrepreneurs think in that dual-speed way. And nowhere is this more essential than crypto, where markets move like meme stocks and infrastructure matures like fine wine.

You have to design governance like it’ll run for 10 years, and ship features like your user will quit tomorrow.

You have to obsess over composability, and also make sure your onboarding doesn't require a PhD in MetaMask rituals.

You have to build for decentralization, while making centralized decisions quickly enough to not die.

Amazon is the master of this. Jeff Bezos used to say, “We are stubborn on vision, and flexible on details.” They had a 10-year plan for AWS before anyone knew what cloud computing was - and still launched a new product every month.

In crypto, we need that same duality.

Think like a philosopher. Move like a street hustler.

So What Does This Mean for Builders in Crypto?

In a hyper-financialized space where short-term gains often outshine long-term value, and where noise often drowns out signal, constraint-based thinking and dual-speed decision making are not luxuries. They’re necessities.

You won’t outspend the L1s with $200M ecosystem funds.

You won’t out-hype the token with the meme-of-the-week.

But you might outlast. And if you outlast, you win.

If you can build something people love in a market that hates you - imagine what happens when the market loves you back.

TL;DR

• Constraint isn’t limitation. It’s a superpower.
• Thinking in two speeds isn’t cognitive dissonance. It’s cognitive advantage.
• The best builders don’t complain about the bear. They use it to get better.
• The best founders don’t choose between vision and speed. They choose both.

Constraints are not your enemy. They’re your launchpad.

So if you’re reading this from your rented WeWork desk, sipping the last of your cold brew, wondering how the hell you’re going to keep going without $4M in runway, remember: you’re not behind. You’re just early.

And early is the best place to be - if you’re crazy enough to think you can win.

Now get back to building.