THINKDROP 49: Frustration as a Fuel
>Frustration is the cheapest R&D budget you'll ever get.
Every founder I know has a list of things that make them angry.
The supplier who promised and didn't deliver. The software that charges you more every time you grow. The tool built for someone else's business, not yours.
Most people complain about that list. Over coffee, on LinkedIn, at 11pm to their partner.
Some of my best decisions came out of mine.
Our first POS, our CRM and THINKDROP, the newsletter you're reading, all started that way. I'll tell you those stories at the end. First, the pattern.
Frustration is not a mood. It's information. It tells you exactly where the world doesn't work yet.
This week is about turning that anger into something that ships.
Pierre Stanghellini
Founder @ HARi.wtf
1. Frustration Is a Spec Sheet
Late 1970s, England. James Dyson buys a top-of-the-range Hoover. It quickly loses suction.
He opens it. The bag's pores are clogged with dust. The machine gets worse the more you use it.
Most people would buy new bags. Dyson got angry. Then he saw a cyclone separating sawdust at a sawmill and thought: why not inside a vacuum?
Five years. 5,127 prototypes. The first bagless vacuum that didn't lose suction.
His frustration wasn't vague. It was precise: it clogs, it loses power. That's not a complaint. That's a product specification.
The same logic works in any business. Generic tools are built for the average customer. If your clients aren't average, the gap between the tool and their reality is where your frustration lives. It's also where the opportunity sits.
A complaint is a product spec nobody has written yet.
Try this: For one week, write down every "this drives me crazy" at work. Be specific: what breaks, when, how often. The one that shows up three times is your next product.
2. When the Vendor Holds the Keys
April 2005. The Linux kernel, one of the biggest software projects on earth, runs on a proprietary tool called BitKeeper. Free for open source. Until it isn't.
The license is revoked. Thousands of developers lose the tool they work with every day.
Linus Torvalds doesn't negotiate. He looks at the free alternatives, hates all of them, and writes his own. The first version takes him about ten days.
He calls it Git. Twenty years later, it's the standard way software teams work.
If a supplier holds the keys to your core business, you don't have a supplier. You have a landlord. And the landlord decides when you eat. Git exists because Torvalds refused to keep paying rent.
Never let someone else hold the keys to the thing that pays your bills.
Try this: List every tool your business depends on. For each one, ask: "If this stops tomorrow, do I stop too?" Every yes is a risk. Every yes at the core of your offer is a product you should own.
3. The Dealer Business Model
You know how a dealer works. The first hit is cheap. Sometimes free. Then you're hooked, and the price goes up.
That's how a lot of business software is sold.
You start with a friendly price per user. You put your contacts in, your history, your automations, your team's habits. Two years later, moving out feels like moving house with a broken leg.
And then the bill grows. Every new hire is a new seat. Every useful feature sits in the next tier. Every renewal comes with an "adjustment".
This isn't a conspiracy theory. In August 2025, Salesforce raised list prices on its Enterprise and Unlimited editions by 6% on average. Its previous increase was in 2023, after seven years of stable prices. Licensing advisors also report renewal clauses adding up to 8–10% a year on top.
To be fair: paying per user isn't a crime. More users, more value, more cost. That's logical. What I can't accept is the lock-in. Your data becomes the hostage, and growth becomes the penalty.
The lesson isn't "build your own software". It's simpler: know your exit cost before you sign.
Cheap to start, expensive to leave: that's not pricing, that's dependency.
Try this: Open the contract of the software you depend on most. Find three clauses: price increase at renewal, data export, notice period. Can't find them in ten minutes? Email your vendor this week and ask. Their answer tells you who holds the keys.
4. "I Could Do Better Myself"
"I could do better myself." It's the most dangerous sentence in business, and one of the most useful. Founders love a rage origin story to go with it. The classic one: Reed Hastings gets a $40 late fee from Blockbuster for Apollo 13, gets furious, invents Netflix.
It's a great story. According to his co-founder Marc Randolph, it's not how it happened. He calls it a convenient fiction, built to explain the business model.
The real story is usually less cinematic. Someone gets annoyed, opens a blank page, then does the boring work for years. The anger makes a good story. The work makes the company. Once you say "I could do better", you have two choices: prove it, or shut up.
"I could do better" is a promise. Frustration makes it. Only you can keep it.
Try this: Name one product, service or piece of content you consume and complain about. Write down exactly what you'd do differently. Then ask: would I still do it if nobody was annoying me?
5. Anger Burns Fast
In 2011, researchers at the University of Amsterdam made people angry on purpose, then asked them to brainstorm.
At first, the angry group won. More ideas, and more original ones. Then their performance dropped, until they did no better than anyone else. Anger is a sprint fuel. It burns hot and runs out.
That matches what most founders live. Anger gets the first version out. It doesn't get the fiftieth out. Habits do. A calendar does. A team does.
There's a second trap. Frustration can turn into pride. "Not invented here": the belief that only what you build is good enough. A classic 1982 study of R&D teams found their performance declined after about five years, as they stopped listening to the outside world.
Founders who built one tool themselves often want to build everything. That's not courage. That's ego wearing a hard hat.
The rule I use now: build what's core to how we win. Buy everything else, and stop complaining about it.
Anger starts the engine. Systems keep it running.
Try this: Before you build anything out of frustration, answer two questions.
Is this core to how I win clients? Would I still care about it in six months, once I've calmed down? Two yeses: build. Anything else: buy, and move on.
5-Point Recap
Write the spec. A precise frustration is a product waiting to be built.
Own your keys. If a supplier controls your core, they control your future.
Watch the hook. Cheap to start, expensive to leave is dependency, not pricing.
Keep the promise. "I could do better" means nothing until you ship, and keep shipping.
Build the system. Anger starts things. Only habits finish them.
Food for Thought
I'm grateful for every provider who let me down. The POS provider who cost us a contract. The software that didn't fit our clients. The newsletter that went quiet for three weeks.
Without them, I'd have three fewer things I'm proud of.
Frustration is a gift with terrible wrapping. Most people throw it away with the paper.
So, what's the thing that makes you angriest in your business right now?
And what would you build if you stopped complaining about it?
Tell me in the comments.
Pierre Stanghellini
→ Let's connect, drop me a line directly at pierre@hari.wtf.
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Cas Pratique: My Three Frustrations
Everything above, I learned the hard way. Three times.
1. The POS (2017)
I had my BitKeeper moment in 2017. We had a client deal on the table: La Rotisserie in Hong Kong. We needed a POS that integrated with HARi CRM. A provider told us it was possible. Then it was "coming soon". Then "next sprint".
Six months. And we lost the contract.
So we built our own POS. It was the best idea we ever had. We went from a small CRM provider begging POS companies to work with us, to the first restaurant ecosystem where everything was integrated from day one, each block built deeply for its users: POS for operations teams, CRM for marketing teams, and so on.
2. The CRM (2025)
The same frustration as section 3. Tools that were cheap to start, expensive to grow, and built for someone else's business. Our clients, a wagyu breeder, a watch workshop, a private jet seller, kept bending their business to fit the software. Along the way, we set up 15 HubSpot accounts for clients, and watched them complain about the extravagant cost as they grew. In 2025, with Vincent and our team, we stopped bending and relaunched our own CRM.
3. THINKDROP
Every Sunday, I read Brain Food, Farnam Street's newsletter. Hundreds of thousands of people get it. Mental models, sharp ideas, no noise. I loved it.
Then, in April 2025, it stopped landing. One week. Two weeks. Three weeks.
I was annoyed. Then irritated. Then I heard myself say the most dangerous sentence in business: "I could do better myself."
Most people say it and go back to scrolling. I opened a blank page. THINKDROP was born.
I didn't launch it with a grand vision. I launched it because I was irritated, and because the sentence came out of my mouth before I could stop it.
And yes, I've gone silent too. THINKDROP 43 came out in June, THINKDROP 44 at the end of August. Two months. Frustration got THINKDROP started. Section 5 is what keeps it going.
Your turn: Build or Buy? The Exit-Cost Test
Before you build a tool out of frustration, or sign with a vendor out of convenience, run these five checks. They work for a POS, a CRM, a booking system or an email tool.
Core or context? Does this tool shape how you win and keep clients? If not, buy it.
Exit cost. Can you export all your data, in a usable format, in one day? Ask before signing.
Growth cost. What does it cost with three times your current team? Check per-seat pricing, tier jumps and renewal increases.
Integration promises. "It's on the roadmap" is not a feature. Get a date in writing, or plan as if it never comes.
Your capacity. Building means maintaining, forever. Do you have the people to fix it at 2am?
Three red flags or more on a vendor: negotiate hard or look elsewhere.
Three or more on building: you're probably angry, not strategic.
Questions about this checklist? pierre@hari.wtf
FAQ: Frustration, Building and Buying
Is frustration a good reason to start a business?
It's a good reason to start, not to continue. Frustration points to a real problem and gives you energy to act. Research suggests anger boosts original ideas early, then fades.
To last, a project needs habits and a system, not just irritation.
When should you build your own tool instead of buying one?
Build when the tool is core to how you win clients, and when depending on a supplier puts your revenue at risk. Buy everything else. Building outside your core usually turns into a costly distraction driven by pride.
Why do software costs rise as a team grows?
Most business software charges per user, so every hire adds a seat. Many contracts also include price increases at renewal, and key features sit in higher tiers. The real cost is often lock-in: once your data and processes live in one system, leaving gets expensive.
About the Creator
Pierre Stanghellini is a creative strategist, systems thinker, and curator of mental rabbit holes. He created Thinkdrop Weekly to feed the brains that don't want the same old Business advice. If you're building something bold, beautiful, or strange, this is your corner of the internet.
About HARi.wtf
HARi.wtf is a creative strategy studio for businesses that hate business-as-usual. Born in Hong Kong, in 2017, we work with restless founders, operators, and teams who'd rather break things thoughtfully than grow them blandly.
Explore more at HARi.wtf
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