Blind Faith Is 50% of Building a Company

The moment before you understand how something works is the worst moment to be building it.

You’ve committed months to something. You’ve convinced other people to work with you. You’ve told investors “this will work.” But deep down, you don’t know yet. You can’t know yet. The thing only proves itself by existing.

Trip Adler has lived this twice. At Scribd, he built a subscription model for books in an era when publishers insisted digital would never work. At Created by Humans, he’s solving a licensing problem the entire industry said was impossible. Both times, the space between starting and proving it works is chaos.

When someone asks what carried him through those spaces, Trip doesn’t talk about strategy or market size or competitive advantage. He talks about blind faith.

“I think it’s just blind faith. You just got to believe and go for it,” Trip says. “I think that’s how a lot of entrepreneurs work. They’re just, you know, they have a vision. There’s always marching towards the vision. And sometimes you have days where you like accelerate towards the vision. Sometimes you have setbacks, but you don’t want any of those moments throwing off too much.”

That’s not motivational-poster speak. That’s the actual mechanism that keeps founders moving through periods where all the data points toward failure.

The Turning Point That Doesn’t Announce Itself

One of Trip’s most memorable moments with Scribd was the turning point — the day the company stopped being a curiosity and became inevitable.

“It felt like we were failing and not going anywhere and no one wanted to talk to us,” he recalls. “And then we launched the site. We got a lot of traffic off of the initial launch. Suddenly, my phone was ringing every day with investors trying to invest.”

But here’s the part he emphasizes: that moment felt like a sudden change. In reality, it was the result of 16 years of persistence that nobody could see from the outside.

“I think that was in the grand scheme of things, that was just one small moment. I think you don’t want to let any of these moments be too positive or too negative of a signal,” he says. “I think what matters is just the long-term persistence and shipping away over long period of time.”

This is critical because founders make a mistake: they treat the turning point as proof that they were right all along. Then they stop doing the work that made it happen. The companies that compound are the ones that recognize the turning point as arbitrary and just keep doing what got them there.

The Before-Understanding Space

The real difficulty of building is the before-understanding space. You’ve gone too far to quit. You haven’t gone far enough to see that it works.

Trip encountered this at Scribd when the company was trying to navigate copyright compliance. “When I was just out of college, I launched the site Scribd to let people upload documents to the web. And I didn’t at the time know anything about copyright,” he admits. “Of course what happened was people started uploading pirated books to the website. And then immediately within days, we had all these ceases and desists and threats from the publishing industry.”

That’s the moment. You’ve built something that works technologically. You’ve gotten users. But now you’re facing a legal, business, and moral problem you didn’t anticipate and don’t know how to solve.

The easy choice is to shut down. You tried, it’s harder than you thought, move on.

The hard choice is to stay and figure it out. To hire people who understand copyright. To build systems that work with rights holders instead of against them. To persist not because you know it will work, but because you’ve committed to finding out.

“I implemented a whole DMCA takedown process. We built a whole copyright filter system. This is why I really learned about copyright. But I think I learned about it by first kind of making a mistake and misunderstanding it,” Trip reflects. “I think that’s a common founder journey.”

The blind faith part isn’t believing it will work out. It’s believing it’s worth figuring out even though you don’t know if it will work.

What Blind Faith Actually Means

Here’s where most people get it wrong: blind faith isn’t the absence of thought. It’s thought without certainty.

Trip thinks deeply about the problem. He researches. He learns from what happened at Scribd. He understands the market (lawsuits are expensive, licensing is cheaper, courts will eventually force a choice). He’s built a team and a platform and done deals.

But he doesn’t know if it will work at scale. He doesn’t know if the courts will rule his way. He doesn’t know if AI companies will adopt licensing or double down on litigation.

So he describes it as blind faith, but it’s actually faith paired with relentless work. He marches toward the vision while staying flexible about how to get there.

“Keep marching forward to the vision. And sometimes you accelerate towards the vision. Sometimes you have setbacks, but you don’t want any of those moments throwing off too much,” he says.

This is why he can answer the question “how do you keep your team motivated when you don’t know if it’s working?” with such clarity. You can’t answer it by showing them proof. You can only answer it by being the person who keeps going anyway.

The Scribd Lesson for Created by Humans

What’s remarkable is that Trip left Scribd at its peak. The company was working. It was growing 30% year-over-year. It was a proven success.

Why walk away? Because the work had solved itself. The vision had been proven. The next 16 years would be incremental.

“Yeah, it was just, uh, it was time to do the next thing,” he explains. “I just, uh, yeah, it wasn’t the right place to do exactly what I wanted to do.”

What he wanted to do was solve another impossible problem. And the belief he’s carrying into Created by Humans is the belief that was validated by Scribd: if you commit to the hard problem and persist long enough, you can solve it.

He even describes the joy of starting over in 2025, after leaving a $2B+ company in 2023: “It’s been really nice starting over. Yeah, I’m just having a good time and just taking everything I learned and channeling that into a new vision.”

That’s not the language of someone who’s playing it safe. That’s someone who found that blind faith works, and is choosing to do it again.

The Unexpected Part

What many founders miss is that Scribd’s success wasn’t inevitable. It was the result of a founder who didn’t quit when everyone told him it was impossible, who learned copyright compliance by accident, who built a subscription model that the entire industry said wouldn’t work.

And then he left.

Because the lesson wasn’t “one good idea makes a 16-year company.” The lesson was “persistence on hard problems works.” So he took that lesson to a new hard problem.

“A lot of entrepreneurs work like they have a vision. There’s always marching towards the vision. And sometimes you have days where you like accelerate towards the vision. Sometimes you have setbacks. But you don’t want any of those moments throwing off too much. You just want to keep, keep marching forward to the vision.”

Trip isn’t saying this will definitely work. He’s saying he’s committed to marching until he finds out.

FAQ

What’s the difference between blind faith and delusion?

Blind faith is commit to solving a hard problem and working until you know whether it works. Delusion is believing it will work without doing the work. Trip does the work. He just doesn’t know the outcome yet.

How do you actually motivate a team when nothing is proven?

By being the person who doesn’t need proof to keep going. If the founder wavers, the team wavers. If the founder stays committed to the vision, the team has permission to stay committed.

When should a founder admit blind faith isn’t working and quit?

Trip doesn’t frame it as blind faith failing. He frames it as learning what works and what doesn’t. At some point, the data tells you. The question is whether you’ve given the idea enough time and effort to know. Most founders quit too early.

What did you learn from Scribd that you’re applying to Created by Humans?

That hard problems take time. That you learn by trying and failing, not by planning. That markets move when you build something so good that the illegal option becomes friction. And that if you’re right about the fundamental bet, you can stay with it for decades.

How long can you sustain blind faith?

As long as you’re making progress. Progress doesn’t mean revenue or proof — it means learning. At Scribd, progress meant understanding the copyright problem. At Created by Humans, it means understanding the multi-rights complexity and finding AI companies willing to license.

What happens when the courts rule and licensing is no longer optional?

That’s the validation moment. It’s when blind faith becomes obvious wisdom, and everyone says “of course this was the right bet.” Trip’s goal is to be the incumbent system when that moment happens.

Do you ever feel doubt?

Trip doesn’t say he doesn’t feel doubt. He says you can’t let doubt stop you from marching toward the vision. Doubt is normal. Acting anyway is what matters.

Why did you leave Scribd after 16 years?

The problem had been solved. The company had proven the model works. Continuing would have been incremental success, not building something new. Trip builds because he wants to solve hard problems, not manage success.

How do you know when to persist versus when to pivot?

You persist when the core insight is right but the execution needs adjustment. You pivot when the market tells you the fundamental bet is wrong. Trip’s core insight about licensing (companies will eventually prefer it to litigation) feels right to him, so he persists despite slow adoption today.

What would make you walk away from Created by Humans?

If the core insight proved wrong — if licensing never becomes preferred, if multi-rights complexity can’t be solved operationally, if AI companies choose permanent litigation over temporary licensing. But he doesn’t think that will happen. So he’ll march forward.