The hidden cost of shipping too fast

Speed is the default expectation in most startups. If you are not shipping fast, it can feel like you are falling behind. After 25 years of working with a wide range of teams, I have noticed a pattern: speed often gets treated as progress even when no one has agreed on what progress actually means. Speed works beautifully when there is clarity. When clarity is missing, moving quickly usually creates work that takes months to untangle.

The common scenario is easy to recognize. Someone says, “We already know what to build,” and the team moves straight into execution. Design gets a ticket. Engineering starts estimating. Leadership pushes for timelines. Everyone wants motion because motion feels productive. But without a shared understanding of the problem, everything becomes a matter of opinion. Instead of “Here is what our customers need,” the conversation becomes “Here is what I think we should build” and “Here is what you think we should build.” Once that happens, things slip quickly.

The first thing to break isn’t the product. It is decision making. When the problem is not clearly defined, decisions naturally end up with the most senior person in the room. It is rarely intentional. It is simply how companies behave under time pressure. What follows is a quiet shift in the team’s energy. Designers stop exploring alternatives and choose the first workable idea. Engineers steer toward the easiest approach, not the best one. Meetings get quieter. The team moves from momentum to maintenance.

This is not about people being unmotivated. It is what happens when the path forward is unclear. Humans conserve energy. And at the same time, leaders often find themselves lowering their own standards without noticing it at first. You adapt to the room. Not because you want to, but because that is what groups do. The worst moment is not when a bug ships. It is when you look at the work and realize it is no longer something you are proud of. Speed has not just weakened the product. It has weakened the craft.

I have seen teams move so fast that they spend the next six months repairing what should have been built thoughtfully the first time. In those cases, the fast approach becomes far slower. This is why I appreciate the distinction between speed and velocity. At Summer Health, one of our values is to optimize for velocity, not speed. Speed is simply movement. Velocity is movement with direction. When a team shares the problem and the purpose, moving quickly becomes energizing rather than chaotic.

The reset is simple and almost always effective. Before building anything, pause long enough to ask, “What problem am I solving, and for whom?” It sounds basic, but this question forces alignment. It replaces assumptions with clarity and shifts attention back to the user instead of internal preferences. When teams do this consistently, the entire atmosphere changes. Decisions become easier. Roadmaps make more sense. People contribute more of themselves. You can feel momentum return.

The biggest pattern I have seen across startups is that skipping clarity never saves time. It costs time. The fastest teams are not the ones shipping the most. They are the ones who understand why they are shipping. That is the difference between moving for the sake of movement and moving with purpose. It is the difference between speed and true velocity.