Early stage CEOs get praised for hustle. You say yes. You move fast. You grab every opportunity that shows up.
Eric Martell has lived the dark side of that advice. “We were really tempted to say yes to everything in the early days,” he told me. “If you’re trying to say yes to everything, you’re going to fall short on some things and then you’re going to feel really, really guilty about it.”
That guilt is not harmless. Eric connected it directly to burnout and quality problems. “It just like a ton of negative outcomes,” he said.
Eric built EatStreet from a college dorm room idea into a national delivery platform. As COO, he scaled it to more than 1,000 employees and 15,000 restaurant partners. Now he is CEO of Pear Commerce, a shoppable media and retail commerce platform that has grown 5x year over year and spans 3,000 retailers across 165,000 store locations.
His real lesson is not about saying yes or saying no. It is about building a rubric so your company does not swing wildly between chaos and fear.
The Early Yes Trap
Eric described the early startup mindset well. You are trying to survive. You are trying to find traction. So you say yes to everything that smells like momentum.
The trouble is that you cannot actually do everything. When you fall short, you feel you failed. That is how you end up exhausted while still feeling behind.
The fix is not willpower. It is clarity.
Eric said the biggest personal development for him was having “a rubric in the back of my mind” for what he says yes to and what he says no to. This is a system, not a mood.
That shift matters because it removes the mental tax of case by case decision making. You stop second guessing every choice. You stop chasing competitors into channels that do not fit you.
He gave an example from Pear. Some competitors are “flashy on the influencer side.” Pear is not. The point is not that influencer work is wrong. The point is that Eric decided early what the company will and will not do, and he does not torture himself about it later.
That is what focus looks like.
The Late No Trap
The pendulum swing is common. You say yes to everything, nearly drown, then snap into defensive mode. Eric saw that pattern at EatStreet too. As the company grew into tens of millions in revenue, it shifted into protection mode.
He said it plainly. They moved into “a default saying no to everything.” The logic was understandable. Protect what you built. Reduce risk. Avoid distraction.
Then the market passed them.
Eric pointed to DoorDash and others taking bigger bets and moving faster. The danger is not being cautious. The danger is becoming rigid. Innovation requires some yes.
This is why the rubric matters. “A company that doesn’t swing massively in either direction,” he said, avoids the trap of being underwater because it cannot say no, and avoids the trap of not innovating because it cannot say yes.
A CEO with a rubric protects both speed and sanity.
The Blind Spot That Kills Early Companies
Eric has looked at more than 70 investments. The pattern he sees in struggling early CEOs is familiar. Founders build what they are excited about before they validate the problem.
He said it clearly. Founders chase “a problem that they think really matters” without confirming that the market agrees. The product may be technically impressive. It may even be fun to build. None of that matters if customers do not need it.
Eric did not say this from a distance. Pear lived it. “When Alex and I came up with the idea, it wasn’t what we do right now,” he said. They had to pivot because “nobody was really looking for that solution.”
“Building without the customer in mind,” he said, “is probably the most dangerous thing an early stage CEO can do.”
How A Pivot Actually Works
The pivot story was not a dramatic reinvention. It was a controlled experiment.
Eric credited his co-founder Alex for pushing it through. Eric admitted he gets emotionally attached to doing something a certain way. Alex framed the pivot as complementary, not a rejection.
Their original approach was a tight partnership model with individual retailers. The pivot was to “zoom out and loosen the partnership.” The company would not be deeply integrated with one retailer. Instead, it would support thousands.
Alex’s argument was pragmatic. When you are early, you have more time than traction. “This is a really, really easy alpha build for us,” Eric said. Ship an MVP and see what the market wants.
Then they learned. People wanted the second thing more.
Eric gave the best pivot metaphor I have heard in a while. “We just increased our menu from one item to two,” he said, “and then we realized that people liked the second item more.”
That is what good pivots look like.
- Customer conversations first
- Small test, not a rewrite
- Compare pull between options
- Commit when the signal is clear
A pivot without customer feedback is just a new guess.
The Technical Founder Shift
Eric described the transition that many technical founders struggle with. You are good at solving problems. You build novel solutions. You unblock the company by force of brainpower.
That does not scale.
He said he has always had strong out of the box problem solving ability. The harder part is “to scale that into a company at large so that everyone can kind of have that toolkit.”
His first step was humility. Leadership is not a personality trait. It is a skill. “Just as hard a skill set as the coding itself,” he said. “It is a skill that can be practiced and acquired just like playing an instrument or writing code.”
He also described a weekly practice I like. At the end of the week, he looks back and asks:
- What went right and what was my role in it
- Did I act as a leader or did I act as the person solving the problem
- What disappointed me and how did my behavior contribute
That kind of reflection builds self awareness, and self awareness is the doorway to better leadership.
Eric said it simply. He is still learning, but “I’m committed to being 1% better every single day.”
Capital Discipline Is Optionality
Eric’s approach to fundraising is not about pride. It is about staying alive long enough to find product market fit.
He said he optimizes against short term thinking because it can create terrible long term outcomes. When Pear was starting, he and Alex could have raised a lot more money on stronger terms. They did not.
They chose a $4M pre, $5M post valuation early. That meant giving up meaningful equity. It also gave them something far more valuable. Room to be wrong.
They could “screw up” on product market fit, pivot, and not be crushed by the pressure of trying to grow into an inflated valuation.
In the early stage, Eric sees it as binary. Either the company succeeds or it does not. If it will succeed, it needs capital and optionality. Get enough money to learn quickly without trapping yourself.
He also connected discipline to morale. Pear is running a tight ship and aiming for Rule of 40 performance. Wins feel better when you did not buy them. The team feels the satisfaction of earning growth through execution.
AI As A Force Multiplier Without Losing Humans
Eric’s AI approach is practical. It is everywhere, but it does not replace the human layer.
Support is a good example. “We do not want AI responding” to customers, he said, “but AI is drafting the first draft.” Humans validate and apply the voice. The draft comes from a company repository of information.
He uses LLMs for partner decisions, market term checks, sales message polish, and board decks. He said he asks Claude “15 to 20 questions” a day, and half of them are not technical.
His point was simple. AI is shouldering workload and enabling cash efficiency. That is part of why Pear is approaching break even.
On product, Pear has something many companies do not. A unique dataset. He described it as “hundreds and hundreds of millions of user events” and “billions upon billions of inventory data points.”
Their AI direction is not another dashboard. It is exploration. A more free flowing way to ask questions of the data without preset reporting structures.
That is the right instinct. If you have proprietary data, you have a base layer for differentiated AI.
What This Means For You
Your biggest risk is not saying yes. It is saying yes without a system.
Eric’s path shows what happens when you build a rubric early.
- You avoid guilt driven burnout
- You avoid defensive stagnation
- You pivot through testable learning
- You raise money in a way that preserves optionality
- You use AI to amplify work without abandoning judgment
Focus is not a productivity tip. It is a leadership requirement. Listen to the full episode of The Scaling CEO here.
I am Glenn Gow. I coach CEOs. If you are swinging between chaos and caution, and you want a clear rubric for what to say yes to, what to say no to, and how to keep your company moving without burning out, let’s talk.
