Scott Belsky
Chief Strategy Officer & EVP at Adobe
Scott Belsky is CSO and EVP of Design and Emerging Products at Adobe, founder of Behance, author of The Messy Middle, and angel investor in Pinterest, Uber, Airtable, Flexport, and Warby Parker.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Scott Belsky shares his conviction test for founders stuck in the messy middle: if you have more conviction now than when you started despite failures, persist — you're just in the messy middle. If you've lost conviction, quit immediately. Drawing on his journey from founding Behance to CPO at Adobe, he offers frameworks for enduring the hardest phase of building a company.
Leadership Principles
- → Ask yourself: knowing what I know now, do I have more or less conviction? That tells you whether to continue
- → If you have more conviction despite failures, you're in the messy middle — stick with it
- → If you've lost conviction, quit — your life is short, pivot and do something different
Notable Quotes
"How much conviction do you have in the solution you're building? Knowing all you know now, do you have more or less conviction?"
— On his go-to advice for founders deciding whether to continue or quit
"If you've lost conviction, you should not be doing what you're doing. Quit. Your life is short. Pivot. Do something completely different."
— On when it's time to walk away from a startup
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