As a teenager, George Washington copied 110 rules of conduct into his schoolbook. They came from French maxims that had circulated since the late 1500s (Mount Vernon). Most cover manners: don't hum at the table, don't stand too close when you talk. A few are about character, and one of them is the best capital-raising advice I know.
Rule 82: "Undertake not what you cannot perform but be careful to keep your promise" (110rules.com).
I've spent the past few years writing about Washington's rules in my book, Timeless Civility. This is the first post in an occasional series that applies them to the work I do now: helping founders and leadership teams plan, fund and run their companies.
Rule 82 has two halves, and most people only remember the second. Keeping your promise is the obvious part. The harder discipline comes first: don't promise what you can't actually deliver. Nothing illustrates that better than the two attempts to build the Panama Canal.
The Promise That Couldn't Be Kept
Ferdinand de Lesseps was the most celebrated builder in the world. He had completed the Suez Canal, and in 1879 he set out to do the same in Panama: a sea-level canal through mountains and jungle.
Look at what happened to his numbers. An international engineering congress estimated the project at $214 million. An engineering commission revised that to $168.6 million. De Lesseps then cut the estimate twice more, "with no apparent justification," first to $131.6 million and then to $120 million. The congress had estimated seven or eight years of construction; de Lesseps said six (History of the Panama Canal).
That is a cost estimate cut nearly in half, not by better engineering but by the person raising the money.
He also assumed Suez would carry over to Panama. It didn't. Suez was flat desert. Panama had mountains, torrential rain, landslides and disease no one understood. The French hospital at Ancon set its bedposts in trays of water to keep ants off the patients, and those trays became ideal breeding grounds for the mosquitoes that carried yellow fever and malaria (Linda Hall Library).
The French company went bankrupt in 1889. An estimated 22,000 people had died, and the savings of about 800,000 investors were lost (Panama Canal). Many of those investors were ordinary French savers who had trusted the man who built Suez.
De Lesseps undertook what he could not perform. Then he couldn't keep the promise.
The Promise That Was Re-Written, Then Kept
When the United States took over in 1904, it didn't just pick up the French plan and try harder. It changed the promise.
Under chief engineer John Stevens, the U.S. dropped the sea-level concept and adopted a lock-and-lake design that fit Panama's actual terrain. Dr. William Gorgas treated disease as an engineering problem: draining and oiling standing water, fumigating buildings and screening windows. And in 1907 Theodore Roosevelt put Army engineer George Washington Goethals in charge, with authority to make decisions on the isthmus instead of waiting on boards in Washington.
Goethals also made himself reachable. Every Sunday morning at his office in Culebra, any worker with a grievance could state it directly to him (The Panama Canal Review). Bad news traveled up fast.
The canal was completed in 1914, ahead of its official target date (U.S. Census Bureau), and the final cost came in $25 million below the 1907 estimate (EBSCO). It still came at a terrible human cost: hospital records show 5,609 deaths during the American era (Panama Canal Authority).
There's one more detail worth knowing, because it's the most useful part of the story for anyone raising capital. The American effort didn't hit its first number either. It cost about $326 million against the $144 million originally planned (Harvard Business School Working Knowledge). Its credibility came from re-scoping the project into something that could actually be done, committing to that version, and then delivering it.
Five Lessons for Founders
1. The number you raise against is a promise.
Every projection in a pitch deck, every budget a lender sees, every covenant you sign is a commitment. When a raise is slow, the temptation is to make the plan look cheaper and faster. That's exactly what de Lesseps did. Investors forgive a plan that turns out to be conservative. They don't forget a plan that was shaded to close the round.
2. Your last success isn't your next plan.
Suez gave de Lesseps confidence, and that confidence kept him from seeing Panama clearly. I see the same pattern in founders who assume the playbook from their first company, first market or first plant will work in the next one. Do the diligence on the new terrain: the customers, the unit economics, the capacity, the people you'll actually be able to hire.
3. Price the risks you don't understand yet.
The French didn't know mosquitoes carried yellow fever. Every company has its version of that: a regulatory change, a supply chain that hasn't been stress-tested, a technology that works in the lab but not yet at scale. You can't name every risk, but you can fund a contingency, run a real downside case and set a liquidity floor your board agrees not to go below.
4. Re-scope early, and say so.
Switching to locks wasn't a failure. It was the decision that made the canal possible. When the facts change, re-baseline the plan and tell your investors and lenders before they find out on their own. A revised promise you can keep is worth more than an original promise you're going to miss. I've raised more than $500 million over my career across equity, mezzanine debt and asset-based financing, and the capital partners who stuck with us through hard stretches were the ones who heard bad news from us first.
5. Put one accountable owner close to the work.
Goethals had the authority to decide and the habit of listening. Most growing companies need both: a single owner for the plan who isn't buried in committees, and a reporting rhythm (monthly financials, a rolling cash forecast, honest variance explanations) that brings problems to the surface while they can still be fixed.
A Rule 82 Check Before You Sign
Before you commit to a forecast, a financing or a major project, ask:
Who built this estimate, and has anyone cut it to make the deal work?
What's different about this project from the last one that succeeded?
Which risks have we named, and how much contingency have we funded for the ones we haven't?
If we're wrong by 30%, can we still deliver, or do we need a different plan now?
Who owns delivery, and how fast will bad news reach them?
Washington copied out his rules as a teenager and spent the rest of his life trying to live up to them. Rule 82 is simple to say and hard to practice: be careful what you promise, then keep it.
If you're putting together a 2027 plan, a capital raise or a lender presentation and want to make sure it's a promise you can keep, let's talk.
John Mortenson
Fractional CFO · Straiteis Consulting
