Investor Codie Sanchez argued on her show BigDeal that boredom tolerance separates high performers from quitters. Business Insider profiled the BigDeal host on September 24, and her case carries a lesson for anyone considering how long to stick with a business, portfolio position, or career path.
Why Boredom Tolerance Could Be the Edge Most People Miss
Sanchez, who references investing in hundreds of companies during the segment, says your real competition is “the version of them that gets bored and quits.”
She calls this the attrition moat: fields thin by commitment. Most people who could beat you quit before the contest ends, making staying itself a competitive advantage.
Her summary line: “You can beat someone smarter, better, and faster than you if you just work longer in more focused ways.”
Mailchimp’s Quiet Years Ended in a Billion-Dollar Exit
Her example is Mailchimp. Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius built an email newsletter tool as a side project in 2001. In her words, “For the next 8 years, nothing exciting happened.” They kept showing up anyway.
The ending of that story is confirmed by contemporary reporting, beyond her own account. Reuters reported on September 13, 2021 that Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU | INTU Price Prediction) agreed to buy Mailchimp for about $12 billion, and the Wall Street Journal covered the deal the same day. CNBC reported the price as $12 billion in cash and stock. Investors can review Intuit’s own disclosures through its SEC filings on EDGAR.
Forbes described the $12 billion sale as a major payday for Mailchimp’s bootstrapped founders, who became billionaires, according to CNBC. That detail strengthens her point: two people chose to keep going through the quiet years.
Her Brain Science Explanation for Why People Quit
The co-host noted: “It’s so easy in our world today to be really distracted.”
Sanchez drew on neuroscientist Kent Berridge’s work, distinguishing two separate brain systems: wanting (dopamine-driven) and liking (actual value from the work). Her conclusion: “When boredom hits, you stop wanting the work, but the work never stopped being valuable.”
What She Sees Across Her Portfolio
Sanchez says the pattern holds across the companies she has invested in: “Usually what kills them is that they get bored.”
Citing Bureau of Labor Statistics data, Sanchez says half of new businesses do not survive to year 5. She argues the primary cause is broken commitment, with founders running out of drive before the business runs out of potential.
Questions Her Framework Leaves Open
Mailchimp worked, but the survival statistic cuts both ways. Half of new businesses fail by year 5, and persistence alone does not guarantee Mailchimp-sized outcomes. Plenty of people endure years on something that simply never works. Her central claim survives: quitting early gives up outcomes you cannot yet see. What the framework leaves open is how to tell patience from stubbornness.
Why Her Mechanism Matters More Than Generic Grit
The most useful part of her argument is the mechanism: a reward system that gets people into work, then stops firing long before the work stops being valuable. The gap between those moments is where almost everyone exits.
That places the cause of quitting in brain chemistry and turns it into a predictable event. If the wanting system fades on a schedule of its own, the moment boredom arrives says little about the value of the project. For investors and operators studying why some ventures last, that reframing offers a sharper lens than talent alone.