"Little crappy ships." That is the nickname the US Navy gave the warships it spent up to $100 billion building.

The buyer, mocking its own purchase.Thirty-five of them. An "experiment that didn't work," its own analysts say. Constant mechanical failures, no clear mission, some scrapped after five years in a fleet built to last twenty-five.

Here is how a mistake that size begins. The way the critics put it, the admiral in charge first decided he needed a ship, and only then started figuring out what the ship would actually do. They built the thing first. They defined what it was for second.

In the past year alone, I have walked into four companies doing the exact same thing, just with fewer zeros.

They hired the SDR team before they knew which market they were selling into. They bought the six-figure platform before they could name the problem it solved. They built the feature before a single customer asked for it. Every one of them was busy. Every one was executing.

Not one had stopped to answer the only question that matters: what is this actually for?

Executing feels like progress. Thinking feels like delay. So founders run. They hire, they buy, they build, because motion is comfortable and the hard question is not. By the time someone finally asks what the point was, the money is gone and the team is committed, and now they are defending the decision instead of fixing it.

Exactly like the Navy protecting its sunk cost.

The Navy cannot undo a $100 billion program. A founder, or a CEO, still can. The fix is almost insultingly simple. Before you hire the role, buy the tool, or build the thing, finish one sentence in plain language: "This exists to solve ___." If you cannot finish it without jargon, you are not ready to spend the money. You are about to commission your own little crappy ship.

Run to execute without thinking first and you do not get speed. You get an expensive thing nobody can explain.