Erich Fromm split human motivation into two modes: the desire to be and the desire to have. Founders who operate from "to be" tend to know what they stand for. They build from conviction. The product, the positioning, the message — it all flows from something real inside them.
Then there's the other group. Founders stuck in "to have." They want the traction, the validation, the valuation. And because the goal is external, they grab whatever language the market is currently rewarding. They borrow it.
That borrowing has a name. I call it borrowed convictions.
What it looks like
A founder I worked with recently had a beautiful AI product. It handled external meeting coordination across multiple parties in corporate environments — agencies and clients, EAs and top managers, contractors and stakeholders. A genuinely useful tool solving a real problem.
He was positioning it as "Agentic AI."
Agentic AI. Which says absolutely nothing, because everyone out there is doing agentic AI. That's a technology category. It describes how the product works, not what problem it solves or why anyone should care.
The real insight was buried. His product solved a power dynamics problem. You don't send your Calendly link to your highest-value client. It's disrespectful. Everyone in corporate environments knows this, but nobody in the scheduling space was talking about it. He had the answer and was hiding it behind a borrowed label.
Why? Because "Agentic AI" felt safe. It was trending. VCs understood it. It fit into a bucket that already existed.
The Marketing Manager problem
Think about job titles for a second. "Marketing Manager." Sounds like something. But what does it actually tell you? Could be copywriting, could be websites, could be managing affiliate partners. It's vague enough to cover anything, which means it communicates nothing.
Borrowed convictions work the same way. The messaging sounds like something. It uses the right words. People nod when they hear it. But nobody actually understands what you do or why it matters. Everyone is performing understanding.
It all becomes theater. Skipping real life. Skipping meaningful things.
The trap underneath
This goes deeper than bad messaging. There's real psychology at work.
We live in a time where people get cancelled for being themselves. For not opting into a comfortable social bucket. Founders feel that pressure — from VCs pushing safer strategies, from a market that rewards category language, from the fear of losing what they've already built.
So they hide. They pick the positioning that's already acceptable, already understood, already average. And it feels rational. Why risk standing out when you can blend in and still raise a round?
Because blending in has a cost. A company that lives on borrowed convictions will spend tens of thousands on new positioning every few years. Onboarding breaks — internally and externally — because nobody can explain what the company actually does. The team runs on pragmatic motivation only. No emotional connection. In terms of adding real value to the world, it's closer to zero.
And people feel it. From ten feet. We are tired of being fed vague promises and bullshit. We want to connect with something real. If there's a cheap actor faking what he's not, people will throw tomatoes. The product doesn't matter much at that point.
What happens when you stop borrowing
Compare that to Apple. They started because they wanted to make great products for themselves. They were convinced about what a great product was, and they were bold about saying it. They didn't convince people. They were convinced. And likeminded people found them.
That's the shift I see when founders stop borrowing and start owning. After we do the research, test hypotheses, talk to old and new clients — they see that the thing they wanted to build from their internal conviction is actually something people need. They stop performing. They start acting from self.
I see it in my clients. Their eyes start to spark. They become unbeatable. Ultimate clarity and conviction that what they're doing means something to people.
And it cascades. Users understand the product in a simpler way. They see the authenticity. They want to contribute to the mission. People share much more in customer research when they understand they're contributing to something they genuinely believe in. The whole customer journey becomes clear because you're finally working from truth.
Who this is for
If your team can't articulate what you do and why — if the company is shifting from what you envisioned — if VCs are tearing it apart with safer strategies — you're probably running on borrowed convictions.
Money got you here. Money is fine. But when it's the only motivation, the purpose is missing. And without purpose, you're building on sand.
This is for founders who are doing it to actually solve problems. Like great engineers back in the day. Technical founders are often driven by solving real problems, but that conviction rarely makes it into the brand strategy docs.
It should. That's where it belongs.