Starting a business has never been easier. The risks and uncertainties have never been higher. That’s strategic ambiguity in a nutshell.

My mother and I talk on the phone regularly. Those conversations usually last between one and three hours, and the topics range from day-to-day topics to world affairs and strategic matters. I thoroughly enjoy those calls, and jumping from one topic to the next is probably why those calls take so much time.

A recent call with my mother holds important lessons for every entrepreneur: Everything is clear, until everything is unclear. Let’s connect the dots between world affairs and petty entrepreneurial problems to understand this phenomenon.

Everything is clear

No matter whether you are talking about your business, the war in Iran, or climate change, at first, everything seems to be clear.

There is a saying that business is easy: Revenues up, costs down. Super simple, right? Just get some more customers and lay off a few people on your team. Can’t be that hard, can it?

It’s the same for the war in Iran. No matter if you think starting this war was justified or not, now it’s about opening this damn Straight of Hormuz. Just watch the prices at your petrol station; I think we all agree that Hormuz should be reopened. Since the whole world depends on this geographical bottleneck, I’m sure we can find a solution, right?

Even large-scale problems aren’t that complicated, are they? Look at the melting glaciers anywhere in the world, and you will confirm that climate change is real. No matter what Donald Trump and other climate sceptics tell you. Just like with all the other problems, it shouldn’t be too hard for humanity to get its act together: After all, it’s pretty clear what drives climate change: Fossil fuels. So, what are you waiting for? Just break free of fossil fuels and install some rooftop solar. Not hard, is it?

Everything is unclear

Even though this article is about entrepreneurship, references to geopolitical affairs and climate change are intentional: Seemingly simple problems can be surprisingly difficult to solve. And there are more than enough people who claim they have simple solutions to solve complex problems.

In politics, we call them populists. In entrepreneurship, we call them posers (you will find plenty of them on LinkedIn, bragging about their success).

Let’s return to the ordinary entrepreneur’s problems. I’m the Founder & CEO of Yonder, a B2B SaaS company. I’m doing business globally, and one of our key markets is aviation. Yes, both geopolitics and climate change are highly relevant to our business.

Geopolitics are the reason that I cannot plan for months or years: Just one year ago, who would have thought that missiles would rain down on Abu Dhabi and Riyadh? Just to clarify, we have customers in both cities. And now, why should I be sure that we’re not running into a similar problem with our customers in Vilnius, Nairobi, or Helsinki in the next few months? And even if the headquarters of our customers are not threatened by missiles, will all of our aviation customers survive a severe fuel shortage and a price surge in jet fuel?

Climate change is a little further out than a few months, but if it continues at the current pace, who knows how long aviation as such will survive? We all know that climate change is exponential, so how shall I plan for the long term?

You might think that I’m exaggerating and trying to divert from my day-to-day problems. Wrong. Day-to-day problems come on top of strategic problems. Just the other day, I received a message from one of my employees that he was involved in a serious car accident. It was just with huge luck that he escaped death. Even without near-death experiences in your team, there are plenty of other problems in a business: Urgent bugs, misunderstandings, or project delays, just to name a few.

Conclusion

On one side, entrepreneurship has never been easier than in our current times: Just get a laptop, an internet connection, and a few software and AI tools, and you can start a viable business.

On the other side, the risks and uncertainties in our current times are higher than ever before.

Let’s call this duality strategic ambiguity. Everything is clear, until it isn’t. It’s not an excuse for your entrepreneurial failures, nor is it an excuse for not planning the future.

Welcome to contemporary entrepreneurship.