The other day a VC from Qatar asked me:
💬 “Serhat, you already had a successful agency (YW). Why did you cut that revenue stream and focus only on Adin.AI? You could have done both.”
He already knew the answer. He just wanted to make sure I knew it too.
👨💼I’ve been an entrepreneur for 20 years. And it took me all that time just to build two successful companies. For the past 2.5 years, I’ve had only one thing in my life: Adin.AI.
And here’s what I’ve learned:
⚡The rarest resource in a start-up isn’t money. It’s the founder’s time and energy. If you don’t put it all into one place, the chance of growth is zero.
But there’s something even more important: you need to cut the rope.
🎬 Remember The Dark Knight Rises? There’s a scene where the hero is trapped in a prison, 20–30 meters deep. The only way out is to climb a wall and jump across an impossible gap.
On his first attempt, he ties a rope to his waist. If he falls, the rope saves him. But he fails. Because as long as the rope is there, he never truly commits.
An old prisoner tells him: cut the rope. Without it, he has no choice but to make the jump. And he does.
That’s exactly how I felt. Leaving a stable business wasn’t easy. But at some point, I had to cut the rope.
I still believe this is the only way to truly build a start-up.
What do you think?
Do you need to cut the rope to succeed? 🙂