Remember that moment on Shark Tank India when a founder referenced a McKinsey report and the sharks immediately burst out laughing?

I mean, I'd probably laugh too. It was McKinsey. But what struck me wasn't the joke itself. It was how familiar the reaction felt.
Dissing consultants seems to have become a way to signal that you' re an execution-first founder.

Consultants are accused of stating the obvious, creating unnecessary frameworks and charging eye-watering fees to tell businesses things they already know. The bigger the consultant, the bigger the joke.

The funny thing is, this attitude isn't reserved for the 'Big Five'. It extends to independent strategists, marketing advisors, coaches, fractional leaders and pretty much anyone whose primary job is to help businesses think.

And yet, every founder I know actively seeks advice.

They call investors before making important decisions. They lean on founder friends. They seek out experienced operators. They join communities. They attend roundtables. They listen to podcasts. They build informal advisory boards around themselves. Advice is everywhere.

The catch is that we'd much rather collect free opinions than pay for judgment, wisdom and insight. Somewhere along the way, we convinced ourselves that if enough smart people weigh in, the right answer will eventually emerge.

It rarely does. More opinions don't necessarily lead to better decisions. They just create more noise, more false confidence and the comforting illusion that we've 'done the thinking' when all we've really done is outsource it to a WhatsApp group.

Three reasons why we've ended up here.

The first is the baggage of our economic history. India' s growth story was built on talent and labour. For decades, businesses solved problems by throwing more people at them. We became incredibly good at valuing visible effort because visible effort was what drove growth.

The second reason is more recent. As venture capital transformed the startup ecosystem, we borrowed Silicon Valley' s obsession with speed.

'Move fast and break things' became a philosophy. Activity itself started to feel like progress. Launching, shipping and iterating became badges of productivity, even when they weren't grounded in a clear strategic hypothesis.

The third reason is that strategy hasn't always helped its own reputation. We' ve all sat through 200 slide decks full of data but no insight. We’ve rolled our eyes at consultants thinking jargon flex is a real flex. So yes, some of the jokes are deserved. But bad strategy doesn't make strategy unnecessary any more than bad engineering makes engineering optional. It just makes you appreciate the good ones.

Here's the thing though. Most startups today don't have an execution problem. They have a decision problem. Building a business today isn't just about doing more. Every category has 33 players and the winners won't be the companies that execute the fastest or the mostest. They'll probably be the ones that make better decisions earlier.

I've seen this repeatedly. We're usually called in when growth has plateaued or marketing isn’t working. The instinct is almost always to do more. Launch another campaign. Hire another agency. Increase ad spends. Build a community. Sometimes even build another product.

Sometimes that's the answer.

More often, what the business truly needs is clarity. Who exactly is the target? Why do they buy? What job is the product really doing? When and why does our customer think of our brand? Which initiatives deserve investment? Just as importantly, which ones should be killed?

The challenge is that strategy rarely looks like 'hard work' from the outside. Weeks of interviews, research and analysis might culminate in a sharper positioning, a clearer target audience or the decision not to pursue an opportunity. It can fit on half a slide.

And yet, that half-slide can save months of wasted execution and potentially years of building in the wrong direction. Slow is fast when it comes to good strategy. A solid plan gives wings to execution teams.

Execution will always matter. But when everyone has access to the same tools, agencies, AI models and growth playbooks, the real differentiator won't be who works the hardest. It'll be the people who've put in the thought.

Maybe then, we'll finally stop treating strategy as an expense. Because, as it turns out, the most expensive strategy is usually not having one.

The author is co-founder, Early Partners.