What happens if you are just 1 minute late for the train? You will miss it and will have to wait for a second chance. What if that's the last train of the day? There's often a huge penalty for missing opportunities, and it's becoming more and more so as the business pace becomes faster.

There's an old sales trick, called “getting to yes”. The idea behind this sales technique is to keep the customer saying “yes”, even to trivial things. The idea is that if the customer is saying “yes” to basic questions, they will be more positive when having to make a decision about buying your product.

If you're running your startup well, you are probably relying a lot on data. You have the cash flow, revenues and costs. You have number of users, convergence rates, acquisition costs. Forecasts, targets and budgets. Not to mention the traditional financial sheets, cap table and P&L (profit and loss). To show someone that your startup is managed well, it is often just an exercise of pulling out the relevant excel sheet to show that you're on top of things.

Breaking the rules is great. I personally like it. As a society, we admire people who break the conventional thought and succeed as a result. “Think Different” is a popular phrase, posted on office walls everywhere. Americans reference “Thinking outside the box” as a positive trait of someone who is not bound by rules or typical behavior.