Success in startups, I suspect, depends largely on discovering a series of fundamental, contextually correct efficiencies, spanning from raw awarenesses to full-blown systems. Hang in with me.

These efficiencies are Levers, and applying the right ones makes startup life energy-affirming or energy-degrading. They can be external or internal, but the operator of the lever is always us or our company as some measure of effort is applied.

The Difference Between External and Internal Levers

Examples of External Levers:
distribution channels, pricing models, team composition, product design choices, narrative positioning. We all know about these, it’s what the vast majority of startup content covers.

Examples of Internal Levers:
values, motivations, energetic cadence (output/input), attention/focus habits, decision-making state, and the beliefs that shape where you point your ambition. 

Both external and internal Levers are essential, but founders often treat the internal ones as hacks rather than leveraged self-awareness; or worse, they miss or dismiss them entirely.

We shouldn’t ignore Internal levers as founders, because they drive:

• what we notice
• what we pursue
• how we interpret rejection (and how long it takes to recover)
• what we tolerate (in self and others)
• what we avoid (in self and others)
• how well or how long we can sit with uncertainty and discomfort
• and whether our ambition fuels us or drains us
• and so much more.
  
  

So basically, our startup’s physics sit on top of our’s and our team’s personal psychology, and I suspect this fact has a lot to do with why startup success feels so elusive and hard to replicate based on stone cold logistics.

It’s not sexy. In fact, it feels quite complicated to master on top of building a startup. But it’s the internal levers that dictate which external levers we see, adopt, and how we go about using them, which has implications on the success of our company… so it behooves us to manage them wisely. 

Let’s look more closely at Internal Levers and hopefully make it clearer what to watch for as you establish your own.

Understanding Internal Levers

An Optimal Internal Lever will combine three or more of the following bullet points in their entirety. Extra points if it hits all of them: 

• Fuels motivation, ignites ambition, and propels progress so one can be ready and responsive (vs reactive) when opportunities arise
• Steadies decision-making, serves a collective, and sensitizes so one can be attuned to reality
• Guides and grounds thought and behavior in truth, provides supportive infrastructure, and streamlines execution so one can create capacity for spaciousness
• Unlocks possibility, animates and energizes, and tempers the seriousness of ambition with enjoyment so that one can sustainably keep momentum… you see where this is going?

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When a series of a few, carefully chosen levers are working to meet the same demand, they provide outsized returns spanning multiple areas of life and business. They perpetuate a virtuous cycle that makes a founder seem superhuman.
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Examples of Epic Levers

Melanie Perkins, Founder of Canva

My favorite, most kickass example of an Optimal Internal Lever *machine* is Melanie Perkins’.

Perkins’ internal levers aligned around a single, very real demand: 

Millions of people wanted to make things, share ideas, and participate in visual communication, but they couldn’t because of the existing tools’ barriers to entry. Can attest to this as a recovering brand strategist and designer, Adobe sometimes feels like a necessary evil if you need total creative freedom.

Melanie’s internal machinery let her respond to and meet that demand with uncommon clarity:

• Motivation + responsiveness:
  She wasn’t initially trying to build another startup, she was pulled forward by the unmet need of her students and had existing tech to launch from. That made her incredibly responsive to what would genuinely help non-designers create on a global scale.
  
  
• Steadied decision-making:
  Her internal compass kept Canva simple and accessible even as investors pushed for complexity. She stayed aligned with the actual demand rather than letting her ego inflate and dictate her directionality.
  
  
• Grounding + capacity:
  She built the company at a pace and structure that matched her temperament: calm, systems-oriented, people-first. That internal architecture created space for long-range thinking rather than reactive scaling. This is so epically important, I’m salivating.
  
  
• Energy + possibility:
  She found the work energizing. The mission brought enjoyment, not depletion, which kept her momentum high through rejection and iteration.
  
  

Because these internal levers all pointed at the same pulling demand, they compounded with each external lever successfully applied. From the outside, it looked like effortless PMF. But, from the inside it was simply aligned internal physics serving real human needs in practical ways.

(PS: as of mid‑2025, Canva was valued at around US $42 billion, profitable, and Melanie is one of the youngest self-made female tech billionaires. Hell. Yeah. Not at all ashamed to fangirl.)

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Rob Snyder, Founder of Reframe and Waffle

One of my new favorite thinkers in the startup space is Rob Snyder. Through his PMF newsletter on Substack, @howtogrow, in tandem with a companion podcast, “The Physics of Startups,” Rob addresses head-on what makes startups work (or not). 

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As a quick aside, I consider Rob’s content essential reading/listening because he speaks specific sanity without much of an ego (we all have one), in a space where others might platitudinize in self-serving directions and counterproductive generalities. Highly recommend you check out Rob’s work as the antidote.

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In a recent post/episode, Rob addressed something he calls, “The Divine Lever.” By which he means:

• “Divine,” not to imply theism or doctrine, but as a means to convey “objective good.” (English is infuriatingly limiting, and easily loaded, isn’t it?)
• “Lever” being a simple machine that, when force is applied one can achieve mechanical advantage.

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Let’s unpack The Divine Lever in the context of Optimal Internal Levers. It’s a heavy hitter because it has beneficial outcomes on both business and personal fronts; and, used correctly, covers each of the Optimal Internal Lever criteria:

✅ fuels motivation, ignites ambition, and propels progress so one can be ready and responsive (not reactive) when opportunities arise

✅ steadies decision-making, serves a collective, and sensitizes so one can be attuned to reality

✅ guides and grounds thought and behavior, provides supportive infrastructure, and streamlines execution so one can create capacity for spaciousness

✅ unlocks possibility, animates/energizes, and tempers the seriousness of ambition with enjoyment so that one can sustainably keep momentum.

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All of these outcomes fuel a startup forward. Again, outsized returns across multiple areas.

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In Closing

The moment you recognize the levers beneath your effort, you gain access to a kind of momentum that can’t be faked or forced.

More to come in a follow-up post about the lever of all levers for startup founders: The Human Lever.

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