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real messages from real people make me feel real
on loud bangers and the long way around
Laura Winberry
February 24, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
gm and welcome to issue 58. Last week I had some long travel days filled with some really engaging hours spent listening to a backlog of Startup episodes. I also got through maybe 2h total of War and Peace. I was overly ambitious—turns out listening to a 60-hour recording of a 19th-century translated Russian-French novel is neither the ideal way to consume it nor particularly safe for long stretches of highway. With these long travel days, I shared three links to things I thought were worth your time. Hopefully at least one of them was.
This week I’m dipping into the power of real messages from real people. Here we go.
cyclebar and/or wtf are we doing
Yeah so this was me last Thursday night in PDX—I had little to no idea what I was getting into (aside from the cycling part). wtf and/or lol are both appropriate reactions.
It was super-raining all day and I wanted to get some energy out and sweat. Their marketing led me to believe there would be an actual bar involved. There was no such bar.
The description also promised “loud bangers.” Playing Christian rock for the closer while the instructor breathy-whispers from a dimly lit stage does not constitute a loud banger in my world. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. I could not get out of there fast enough.
You know what it felt like? No joke—it felt like a half-veiled youth-pastor bait-and-switch. But the class was free and, per the post-sweat email, I had apparently won it.
real words from real people matter
Two weeks ago, while I was busy writing issue fifty six, someone was busy filling out the survey that I really need/want people to fill out, and writing me this message:
insert emotional emoji of your choice
And then about a week before that, I had the following exchange with another business owner and survey-filler-outer:
When you’re painstakingly gathering survey responses one by one, cold emailing, cold calling, building solo (for the time being), and generally just figuring out how to sail multiple ships while they’re all already in some kind of motion—messages like these are a buoy.
I know, I say this every time I share shit like this. But I really feel like the takeaway bears repeating, and remembering, in the context of pretty much anything in life: you never know the voids and expanses and ache people are making their way through on any given day; real words from real people matter, more than you know.
“‘I’ve spoken with hundreds of customers’ sounds sexier than, ‘I’ve had deep immersion with five.’ But you can get more out of an in-context immersion with five in a week or two than wandering conversations over months with dozens of customers.”
This quote from Jeanette Mellinger counts as “real words from real people” too. Really. I first shared snippets of insight and wisdom from Jeanette—a Harvard Business School Executive Fellow—in the beginning of December, when I was writing about trojan horses and self-discovery as a founder. They’re mostly from this article and mostly really fucking useful.
As soon as I start feeling as though I’m maybe fucking things up because this validation phase is taking so long, or because I still only have half the responses I need, these real words from a real person who actually understands this world grab me by the bicep and, like a small child being hoisted from the dirt, yank me up a little.
Something else that steadied me this past week was returning to one of the many older episodes of Startup. It’s a great podcast series about, in the founder Alex Blumberg’s words, “what happens when someone who knows nothing about business starts one.” Season one follows Alex on his founder’s journey to starting Startup—yes, the podcast itself.
it snowed in Bellingham and I got to spend precious time with these precious creatures
In season two, the podcast shifts its focus to being more about “what it’s really like to get a business off the ground,” and follows an entirely new company. After the two founders go through Y Combinator—the prestigious, bro-forward accelerator that’s funded companies like Reddit, Airbnb, OpenAI, Stripe, and Coinbase—they start hitting roadblock after roadblock. It surprised me at first, but then I reminded myself that these founders were two women in their 20’s and this season aired eleven years ago.
The thing that dawned on these founders way after they’d already gone through YC and gotten some funding and even had a few employees is what yanked me up, or rather, re-grounded me in the why of this s-l-o-w but steady process I’m currently in.
One of the founders says how she really wished she had done a bunch of surveying before ever even starting the company, because so many people can tell you yeah that's a great idea—but is it actually something people are going to want and pay for?
Heard. Loud and clear. Even if I want to go from step A to step Q right fucking now, I know why I’m doing what I’m doing, and I’m fucking glad I’m doing it. I want to build something people actually want and use, not something I just feel like they’ll want and use. The former is a business model, the latter is… just an idea.
it rained and sun-clouded-rained in Portland and I got to revel in this gem and her gemstone of a family
That's issue 58. Thanks for reading and hanging out. See you next week, sweethearts.
xoxo,
lw
PS: Subscribe now if you're into this messy build-in-public energy. Miss the last issue? It’s right here. Also literally none of this is ever advice. I’m sharing what I learn through Babe, and perhaps you’ll learn from my mistakes. Hopefully, maybe, who knows, ily.