Revenue Is an Outcome. Judgment Is the Asset.

I can build a $100 million revenue company by tomorrow lunch.

Here is the business plan: I will buy iPhones for $1,000 and sell them on my website for $500.

My revenue chart will look like a hockey stick. 📈 My customer acquisition cost will be zero (people love cheap phones). TechCrunch will probably write an article about my “disruptive pricing strategy.”

There is just one tiny problem: I am an idiot.

I used this extreme example because we often confuse motion with progress. We look at Revenue as the report card, but Revenue is a liar. Revenue just tells you that money moved from one bank account to another. It doesn’t tell you if you made a smart decision to move it.

In the early days of Ergode, I realized that Revenue is just an outcome. Judgment is the actual asset.

The “Growth Hack” Addiction

We live in an era obsessed with “Growth Hacks.”

We want the cheat code. We want the A/B test that increases conversion by 0.04%. We want the “one weird trick” to double sales.

But here is the truth: Growth hacks decay. Judgment compounds.

A growth hack is like a sugar rush. It feels great for 20 minutes, and then you crash. You tricked a few people into clicking a button. Congratulations. But did you build a business?

Judgment is different. Judgment is the ability to look at a “great opportunity” that promises fast cash and say, “No, that’s a distraction.”

The Most Profitable Word in Business

The most expensive word in a founder’s vocabulary is “Yes.” The most profitable word is “No.”

When you have good judgment, you say “No” to the bad revenue.

• “No” to the client who pays well but treats your team like garbage.
• “No” to the trendy product category (remember NFTs?) that doesn’t fit your core competence.
• “No” to the revenue that looks good on a slide deck but destroys your margins.

I have seen so many founders kill their companies because they couldn’t resist the temptation of “bad revenue.” They chased a number on a spreadsheet and forgot that the goal of a business is to stay in business.

Judgment Is the Algorithm

In a world where AI can write code and algorithms can optimize ads, what is left for the CEO?

Your job isn’t to be the smartest person in the room anymore. Your job is to have the best taste.

Your job is to look at the data, look at the market, look at your gut, and make the call that the spreadsheet can’t justify yet.

• Amazon Prime didn’t make sense on a spreadsheet in 2005. It was a money pit. But Bezos had the judgment to know it would build a moat.
• Bootstrapping Ergode instead of taking VC money didn’t make sense to my friends. “Take the cash, Rupesh!” they said. But my judgment told me that freedom was worth more than speed.

The 10-Year View

Here is how you know if you are building Judgment or just chasing Revenue:

Ask yourself: “If I make this decision today, will I look like a genius or a fool in 10 years?”

If you are just chasing revenue, you are usually borrowing from your future self. You are selling $10 bills for $9 to hit a quarterly target.

But if you are building Judgment, you are playing a different game. You are accepting that the line might be flat today, so it can be vertical tomorrow.

So, stop worshipping the revenue chart. It’s a lagging indicator. It tells you what happened yesterday.

Invest in your judgment. That’s the only asset that actually appreciates over time.

And please, don’t sell iPhones for $500. It’s a bad business model. Trust me.

Regards,

Rupesh