The Conscious Writer

Engineering a Plane While Trying to Fly It

Imagine you’re trying to build an airplane while flying it. You’re adding wings mid-air, patching leaks with duct tape, and hoping the engine holds together long enough to reach your destination. Sounds exhilarating, right? Maybe. But it also sounds reckless, unsustainable, and destined for a crash landing.

Yet, this is often the reality in the startup world. The “build as you go” mentality can be celebrated as a badge of honor—proof of agility, resilience, and speed. But more often than not, it leads to a plane barely held together by superglue and tape, heading into a nose dive.

In the startup world, we glorify iteration and scrappiness, but somewhere along the way, we’ve confused adaptability with carelessness. We forget that building something worth flying takes thoughtful engineering, a solid foundation, and a clear understanding of where we’re headed. This is true for not only products but also for brands, business strategy, and design.

Brand: More Than Just a Logo

When startups take the “flying-while-building” approach to their brand, they often end up with something that feels fragmented and inconsistent. Branding isn’t just about slapping a logo on your website at the last minute; it’s about intentionally crafting how people perceive you. If the brand is rushed, if it’s patched together without a clear strategy, it becomes a reflection of the chaos within the company itself.

A strong brand provides direction—it’s the compass that guides every decision, every communication, and every interaction. If you try to figure out your brand while you’re already in the air, you’re left with something reactive instead of proactive, something fragile instead of resilient.

Business Strategy: Knowing the Destination

Flying an unfinished plane is risky because you have no clear path to your destination. Business strategy works the same way. You can’t just take off and hope to figure things out along the way—especially not in a competitive landscape. A well-thought-out strategy gives you a roadmap. It ensures that every decision, every pivot, and every iteration is aligned with a long-term goal.

Without a clear strategy, startups end up making reactive moves that might seem necessary in the moment but are often misaligned with their vision. This lack of cohesion is what leads to a plane built out of whatever materials were within arm’s reach, ultimately making it prone to failure.

Design: Building with Intention

Design is not just decoration—it’s the structure that holds the entire plane together. In the rush to launch, startups often treat design as something they’ll “fix later.” But design isn’t just about how things look; it’s about how they work, how they connect, and how they solve problems for the user.

When you neglect design in the name of speed, you end up with a product that feels disjointed and confusing—a half-built plane where nothing quite fits together. Thoughtful design means considering the user experience from the beginning, ensuring that everything aligns seamlessly and that the “plane” is built to not only fly but soar.

A Better Way Forward

What if, instead of glorifying the idea of building while flying, we focused on laying the right foundation from the start? What if we took the time to plan, strategize, and build intentionally—so that when we finally take off, we know we’re in a plane capable of soaring?

It’s time to rethink the startup mindset. Iteration is important, and agility is key, but not at the cost of building something fundamentally flawed. A strong brand, a clear strategy, and thoughtful design are not luxuries—they’re necessities for a plane that’s built to fly high and go the distance.

Let’s stop engineering our planes mid-air. Let’s start building with intention, so we can truly take off and reach new heights.

What are your thoughts on this mindset shift? Have you seen the “build-while-flying” approach succeed or fail? I’d love to hear your experiences.