What is babaijabuloto?
In its native usage, babaijabuloto is slang — a madeup term in some communities to describe disorganized hustle. Think trying to launch a product, find customers, balance books, and pivot strategy all by Tuesday. It’s not the chaos itself that kills a startup, it’s the mindset of doing everything without discipline.
Entrepreneurs wear many hats, but the trouble starts when you forget to take them off. If your startup feels like it’s permanently stuck in a planning session with no clear outcome, congratulations: you’re deep in the babaijabuloto zone.
Chaos has a cost
Speed looks impressive from the outside. But sprinting aimlessly burns out teams, drains capital, and blurs direction. Startups that thrive focus ruthlessly on traction — not just motion. Being busy isn’t proof you’re winning.
This is where a spartan mindset helps. Limit meetings. Prioritize outcomes over ideas. Build, ship, measure. Keep one vision in focus and hold the team to it. The goal isn’t perfection; it’s progress without noise.
Founders aren’t supposed to do everything
Founders fall into the “doitall” trap too often. Yes, in the beginning, you might be the CEO, marketer, and janitor. But if six months in you’re still juggling everything, you’ve built a job, not a company.
It’s better to automate or delegate lowvalue tasks than to champion your ability to multitask. Clarity scales. Complexity doesn’t.
Get a realistic view of your time. Be honest about what drives actual results. Then hand off or kill anything that doesn’t.
Strategy is what you say no to
Billiondollar companies aren’t making decisions from whiteboards filled with chaos. They figure out what matters and cut everything else.
Fighting babaijabuloto means saying no early — to projects, ideas, stretch goals, shiny objects, even clients. A welltimed no protects your yes for what matters.
If your roadmap has 15 priorities, you don’t have priorities. You’ve got a todo list pretending to be a vision.
Build systems, not bandaids
Let’s get practical. If you’re stuck in reactive mode all week, your workflows aren’t working. You don’t have to build a perfect playbook — start lean. Document a repeatable process. Find points of failure. Test how fast new hires can perform the task.
Processes free up mental energy. They aren’t bureaucracy — they’re armor. Without a system, you’ll run back into fires you thought were out.
Even 30 minutes a week spent improving internal systems adds up. It’s harder in the shortterm, but it pays in clarity, speed, and scale.
Culture is grown, not installed
You can’t declare team values and then ignore them during crunch time. Chaos is contagious. If your team sees leadership in panic mode, skipping strategy for adrenaline, they’ll copy it.
Real culture is a mix of habits, tension management, communication style, and shared priorities. If you’re always “too busy” to talk purpose or process, you’re growing a culture of babaijabuloto, not performance.
Set expectations. Build space for team clarity. People don’t burn out because they work hard; they burn out because their effort feels chaotically spent.
Find leverage
Smart founders don’t just hire fast — they hire right. Bringing in someone who removes 10 recurring tasks from your plate is 10x more valuable than an idea guy hyped on vision.
Leverage comes from people, software, and pipelines. Make sure you’re looking at the cost not just in dollars, but in hours and attention.
Use leverage to do less, better. That’s the smartest way to escape the mess.
Let go to level up
Everything works until it doesn’t. A process that got you to 100K won’t take you to 1M. That’s normal. It just means it’s time to evolve.
Staying in babaijabuloto mode because “this is how we’ve always done it” kills potential. Don’t protect broken systems. Break them before they break you.
Every founder hits the moment where learning matters more than instinct. That’s when things really start to grow.
Final word: Simplify or stall
Building something great isn’t about moving faster. It’s about moving better. Don’t confuse effort with effectiveness. If your week is packed but your growth is flat, step back and assess.
Babaijabuloto isn’t a feature of earlystage life — it’s a warning sign. When everything feels urgent, nothing gets done well.
Simplify. Focus. Trim the noise. Sharpen the signal.
You’re not here to be busy. You’re here to build.
