Tag Archives: Founder

Creating Your Own Wake

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As a founder your survival is a function of how you create your own wake.

Wikipedia defines a wake as:

A wake is the region of recirculating flow immediately behind a moving or stationary solid body, caused by the flow of surrounding fluid around the body. There is formation of vortex in the wake which is the region of low pressure in it.

…The formation of these waves in liquids is analogous to the generation of shockwaves in compressible flow, such as those generated by rockets and aircraft traveling supersonic through air.

wake

Circulating flow.

Vortex.

Pressure.

Shockwaves.

If you read the entire definition you’ll likely get lost in a hell of a lot of science but those are the words that jump out to me when I read the definition of wake. It doesn’t just apply only to water either, if we could see movements of air we’d be seeing the impacts of wakes and shockwaves all around us.

To me, in human terms wake simply means your lasting impact on the world around you.

I have been thinking about this phenomenon recently since I made the leap back into entrepreneurship as a founder, (re)discovering all the painful and challenging issues you deal with as you are just starting out. So many things are working against you and the inertia of the world is quite similar to the inertia of water. A boat doesn’t create a wake unless its moving. Same for us. Forward progress in life requires some sort of energetic force to drive you forward, pushing against the inertia of the world and creating a wake that ripples outwardly away from you and positively impacting others around you.

There’s some social science for ya.

One of the most important lessons I learned in the last couple of years is you can make the entrepreneurial path a little easier by creating a wake around/behind yourself. This is not easy, because it requires effort and energy to do things we generally don’t want to do.  Going above and beyond our normal comfort zone to stand out is almost the antithesis to what we as humans feel we want to be doing each day/week/month.

But standing out – creating a wake impacting others – is what is required of you as a first time founder who is desperately wanting to make it to the next level. That or get lost in the thousands of others vying for the same attention, money and position.

What would a wake look like in real life? How would it involve humans, social interactions, business decisions, etc?

I find the key to gaining an edge when just starting out is finding specific actions to take to create a wake in an industry – shockwaves that keep spreading and impacting people you might not even have direct contact with.

Start writing on topics people in your industry might find interesting, posting them on social media and guest posting on other media outlets. Who cares what you write about (okay that’s kind of harsh but you get what I am saying) and what others might comment on, just having a voice and putting it out there places you at the top 10% in your industry. Be consistent in your writing efforts and don’t worry your audience will find you. Create video or other visual content which is entertaining and educational and that others can share with their networks. It doesn’t exactly matter what you record and put out, it just matters that you start and don’t stop so others start to recognize you. Organize local events and meetups around relevant industry topics so you can help others connect with each other. Be seen and be known. Work on and release products which are both interesting and have high potential to change your industry. Who knows, you might learn something new! Carry yourself, shake hands and talk in a way where people will be impressed.

These are the things people remember, they are what people share with others and what sticks in a room once you leave. That’s your wake.

 

Give Yourself Permission To Fail

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Giving myself permission to fail has been a reoccurring thought as of late, and reading a recent post from Keen.io CEO Michelle Wetzler really solidified it for me.

After a few years in the back seat helping others in the building process I am back in the founding position. As I get back into the drivers seat I am reminded that my mental approach to this next journey determines so much of my trajectory and overall success.

If I am scared to fail, I most likely will fail. If I am worried we’ll go broke, we most likely will go broke. If I think I am not good enough to be CEO and not fit to lead a successful company, I most definitely will be those things.

BUT if I reverse that thinking I can reverse the psychology as well.  If I believe I’ll be successful, I most likely will. If I am confident in our finances, we most likely will stay afloat. If I think I am good enough to be CEO and fit to lead a successful company, I most definitely will be those things. And if I open myself up to possibility of failure I see that it is not that bad.

Michelle sums it up perfectly.

Giving myself permission to fail has been one of the most liberating, stress-relieving, and rewarding things I’ve done in last year.

The only way we can become a truly great company is if we open ourselves to the possibility that we might not be.

And you know what? It’s okay if we’re not. If Keen busts, we’ll all find new grand adventures. Some us could start a new company together, or get boring jobs at big co’s, or sail around the world, who knows, the world is full of lots of amazing opportunities.

…To give yourself permission to fail, you have to untangle your ego from your work. Having your ego tied up in your work is a handicap. You can’t think strategically or take risks when you and your personal well-being are on the line.

Basically, embracing reality frees you up to be everything you were meant to be. By not being paralyzed by what could happen, you are free to create what should happen.

This is an important lesson for founders, especially first timers who fall victim to impostor syndrome. Wikipedia defines it as “a term coined in the 1970s by psychologists and researchers to informally describe people who are unable to internalize their accomplishments. Despite external evidence of their competence, those exhibiting the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved.”

Another way to think of impostor syndrome is to be so frightened by your future (be it positive or negative) that you simply don’t believe you are doing the right things or are the right person for the job. You question every little decision you should make, you aren’t sure if you should go left or right. You think your peers see a different version of you, a lesser qualified person sitting in the front seat pretending they know what they are doing.  You start believing you are an impostor and thus end up failing in the end.

This is all wrong and can be mitigated by giving yourself permission to fail before you even start. That way you are free to make the correct decisions, knowing failure is just part of the process. It sounds crazy but a simple change in perspective makes all the difference. I have found the best perspective is that the world is full of lots of amazing opportunities, and if you fail at this one there’s always the next one.

That, my friends, is why I am back in the drivers seat.

Do Something Everyday That Terrifies You

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1805756738_ec05607189_zHere’s some advice that might be scary to you: Do something everyday that terrifies you.

It’s a simple sentence yes, but its consequences reach far and wide. Having courage to do things that scare you is the essence of growth and progress, in both your personal and professional life.

I noticed this phenomenon recently in my own life when I chose to start meditating every day. Before I started, I viewed mediation as a foreign activity, something only eastern religions practiced. But actually, I was scared about doing it for some weird reason, namely because it was new and different to me.

Yet I decided to lean into my fear, push it aside and dive right in. Five months later and I am still going strong, maybe missing one day per week on the weekends when something comes up in the morning and I am not able to sit quietly. I can’t even describe the benefits I have enjoyed and the new growth opportunities I have opened up simply because I am sitting quietly each day and contemplating this crazy world we live in.

I also learned doing terrifying things are good for the soul when I reach out to people and sit down with them for a Founders RAW conversation. More and more of my guests are noteworthy people who have founded well known companies or are successful in their previous ventures.

I think to myself “they get hit up all the time so why would they answer my email? And why would they want to talk with me anyway?!”

But you know what?

I send it anyway.

And they answer it!

Meeting set, great conversation had, sweet new Founders RAW video for you all to watch, and new contact/friend made.

All because I chose to be uncomfortable and reach out to someone who might turn me down or not respond to my request. It’s crazy how your mind twists reality to scare you from doing things each day that would totally change your life. You have to acknowledge the warning but then push past it.

Ask for the sale.

Ask the guy or girl out.

Ask the investor for more money.

Jump off the cliff into the water.

Write the blog post you’ve been thinking about.

Smile at the stranger.

Talk to the stranger.

Post the picture.

Build the prototype.

Recruit the team.

Start the company.

Ask for the raise.

Join the new company offering you a promotion.

Move to the new city if you feel the pull.

Guys and girls – the principle works. Do something new and scary each day of your life and you’ll be shocked at what happens next.

Founders RAW is BACK!

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After a year long break, I am excited to announce we are back to filming more Founders RAW conversations.  We filled our need for a new film crew with the addition of Shinebox Films and quickly got to work to complete two new conversations.

For the uninitiated, here’s why I started Founders RAW:

“Founders RAW is actually an experiment.  As founders of an early stage startup we quickly realized how difficult starting a company can be.  And being part of the larger startup community in Seattle we discovered we weren’t alone in our crazy, mind-blowing experiences – apparently others have them too.  The idea started to form once we noticed the frequency of finding ourselves 30 minutes deep in truth sharing and wisdom dropping conversations with founder friends.  We wondered if others would be interested in what we have learned, so we figured why not to bring a camera.  I guess we’ll see what happens.

Founders RAW is a video blog with conversation style interviews focused on bringing out raw stories early stage founders experience in their challenging entrepreneurial journeys.  We invite founders to talk openly over a beer or a coffee about the “truth” of how they survive and grow their companies.  We post the full conversations on the blog but really, who has time to watch 45 minutes of video?  So we slice up the conversations and post nuggets each day as well as send out daily videos no more than 3 or 4 minutes long to blog subscribers.    Now we all can receive daily nuggets of the entrepreneurial truth.”

This year’s guest’s will include founders from Ghostruck, Unikrn as well as a prominent Seattle Angel Investor along with others to follow. You will see more on those when we complete the editorial process, but I wanted to highlight a handful of conversations we had over the last few years to get you back in the mood.

Brewster Stanislaw, cofounder of Inside Social

Marc Weiser, Founder of RPM Ventures

Simon Crosby, Founder of Bromium

Adam Lieb, Founder of Duxter

Bubbles And Golden Ages… Continued

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The following post is an adaptation from the original one I posted on this topic in May of 2011.

I once watched an interview where Fred Wilson offhandedly noted reading a book which transformed the way he looked at markets and the web in general.  I instantly went to Amazon and ordered it and spent the next week reading it front to back.  Whew… it changed my life as well.  I up and quit my job the next month.  Thanks Fred.

Not a day goes by in 2015 we don’t hear the word bubble in some capacity or another. We are on pace for one of the biggest years in Venture Capital deployment since the dot com bubble of 2000. Massive private funding rounds in excess of $1 billion (Uber, et al) coupled with the sickening obsession of Unicorns have created a market with flu like symptoms. Although I cannot predict the future I tend to agree with others who publicly state it feels like we are in for a correction here very soon. If you are a founder of an early stage company, it would do justice to understand the cycle we are in, where exactly we are in it, and what you should do in your specific situation.

Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital by Carlota Perez is one of the greatest overviews of the incredible economic phenomenon known as the bubble.   What we are currently going though – recessions and expansions, bubbles and bursts, highs and lows, whatever you want to call them – they are inevitable.  In fact, the history of the entire world economy is one big cycle which repeats itself over a period of about 60 years.  I cannot do this entire book justice, just take my word for it, go buy it and read it yourself.  You will publicly thank me later just as I just thanked Fred now.  But I will introduce the general phases a new technology (paradigm) encounters so the “layman” technologist, marketer, social media guru or business person can start to see a clearer economic picture.

I hope I am not being too being blunt, but without grasping this concept you are swimming with your cap over your eyes.  You need to understand what is actually going on in this crazy economic world we live in.

Irruption

As a new technology is developed and deployed into our society, it will enter a cycle of adoption.  Interestingly, Perez notes new technologies are created during the maturity phase of the last great technology expansion.  So although we are starting with the irruption phase, let us take for granted the specific technology has already been created and diffused through very early adopter communities.  During the irruption phase, we see a slowing or declining of the old industries and an early adoption of a new technology.  Carlota notes:

The very intense activity of the new paradigm carriers contrast more and more with the decline of the old industries.  A techno-economic split takes place from then on, threatening the survival of the obsolete and creating conditions that will force modernization.

Old print media anyone?  Taxing industry vs Uber and other on-demand ride services? This irruption phase is started with a big bang (invention and initial diffusion) and will propagate within a small community of early adopters.  Note the image above, depicting very low diffusion, even to a point the general masses dismissing the technology altogether.  Amazingly it is contained within this tight group of people and industries for some period of time.  That is until a tipping point is hit. Today, most people who have taken an Uber or Lyft ride – if given a choice – will only take uber from here on out.

Frenzy

Frenzy is a period of massive growth for a new technology.  It is a time of new market creation as well as for rejuvenating old industries.  Once a critical mass of consumers have been hit, the diffusion of the paradigm takes center stage.  Individualism rules the land, as does speculation, wealth creation and ultimately resulting in over-investment flooding the market.   

Frenzy is the later phase of the installation period.  It is a time of new millionaires at one end and growing exclusion at the other, as in the 1880’s to 1890’s, the 1920’s and the 1990’s.   In this phase, financial capital takes over; its immediate interests overule the operation of the whole system.

Notice the part about the growing polarization between the rich and the poor.  Sound familiar? Capital investments soar during this time, creating a false sense of wealth creation.  This craze attracts more and more individuals wanting to get a piece of the action; so late frenzy is financial bubble time.

Turning point

At some point, the bubble has to burst.   Things that go up must come back down.  Interestingly, the turning point is neither an event or a phase, rather it is a process of contextual change. 

The turning point has to do with the balance between individual and social interests within capitalism.  It is the swing of the pendulum from the extreme individualism of Frenzy to giving greater attention to collective well being, usually through the regulatory intervention of the state and the active participation of other forms of civil society.

The turning point is a space for social rethinking and reconsidering.  It is, in fact, the time when the mode of growth that will shape the next few decades is defined.  I would argue we have been in this phase for a while, maybe starting 5-8 years ago.  After picking up the pieces of the crash of the early 2000’s we are now starting to see realignment in almost every industry known to man.  Name an industry that is not currently being touched by the internet and mobile?  Exactly.



Synergy

This is a time for production.  Since the foundations and infrastructures were laid out during the previous phases, conditions are there for dynamic expansion and economies of scale.   The diffusion of the new paradigm now reaches far and wide, is accepted as standard, and now governs supreme.  It is a time for promise, work and hope.  For many, the future looks bright.   

Synergy is the early half of the deployment period.  This phase can be the true ‘golden age’.  It is likely to be the closest the system ever comes to convergence within the economy of the core countries of the system.

Mary Meeker anyone?  She has identified this expansion phase quite eloquently, particularly in the mobile space.  I would argue we are still at the turning point but on the cusp of this synergy phase.  We should expect to observe massive expansion and economies of scale in almost every industry imaginable for the next few decades.  New industries and markets will emerge.  Old ones will finally die off.  Will it be all golden?  I am not so sure.  But if history is any indication, we shall see an expansion of scale only experienced once every 60 or 70 years.

It was this exact point in the book which urged me finally jump off the fence and into my entrepreneurial pursuits full time.      

Maturity

Once again, the cycle continues.  Every paradigm has a shelf life and can only survive so long.  As it enters maturity, deep questions are asked about the system and the climate is favorable for politics and ideological confrontation.  Markets are saturating and technologies are maturing.  

Gradually the paradigm is taken to its ultimate consequences until it shows up its limitations... yet all the signs of prosperity are still around.  Those who reaped the full benefits of the ‘golden age’ continue to hold onto their belief in the virtues of the system and to proclaim eternal and unstoppable progress, in a complacent blindness, which could be called the ‘Great Society Syndrome’.

During maturity, the stage is set for the decline of the whole mode of growth and for the next technological revolution.  Since we are entering a synergy phase, I will not spend much time on maturity.  According to Perez, the next maturity phase should not be entered for quite some time and the decline of our current paradigm should not influence ones innovation or investment perspective.  Yet it is always smart to keep an eye on something like this.  Interestingly, it is in this period inventors and innovators are tinkering with what will eventually become the next great paradigm.  This begs the question:  What will supplant the internet?  I would suggest not worrying much about the answer to that question and take advantage of the current conditions.  According to Perez, it should be quite good for years to come.

The lesson I see here is to know that we are in a smaller bubble within a larger economic cycle.  The smaller bubbles grow and pop fairly regularly with the net result of growth throughout the 60-70 year larger cycle.  The key is to make sure you have made the correct decisions to protect yourself and your company from the small bubble gyrations.

The Tales We Tell Ourself About Failure

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One thing we humans do really well is self doubt.

In the last week I have had two separate conversations with fellow founders about the grave situations their companies are in, how they are staring “defeat” right in the face and don’t really see any other option than to move on.

Both people are down and out right now.  And rightfully so… They have put years of blood, sweat, tears and money in pursuit of their dreams. They feel troubled with the fact that they didn’t succeed in the way they felt they could, didn’t build a meaningful and growing company. I know what they are going through, I have was there a few years ago and had a hard time knowing when it was time to pull the plug.

My advice to them is this:

It’s okay. You think the company (and you) are a failure because you have to move on and go do something else. You may have put your self worth into the company so much so that as the company faces a failure in operation you are feeling like a failure in life. You might be feeling a bit embarrassed because of all the things you said to your friends, family, coworkers, and industry partners now make you look at best untrustworthy, and at worst fraudulent.

These are all normal fears and feelings. They are all accurate and a normal part of the grieving process of a failed attempt at a startup company. But these are all fairy tales we repeat internally.

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The reality is the very fact you set out and tried something unique and different is the success in this story. The very fact that you had the courage to attempt something most people would be afraid to do is the success. The fact that you were looking to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem is the success. Most likely your entrepreneurial decisions inspired at least one other person to jump up and start their own entrepreneurial journey. And further, maybe that person and their project turns out to be a massive success, impacting millions of people around the world, lots of that due to you. You may never know… but it’s a possibility isn’t it?

Many people lean on the stat that something like 75-90% of all startups fail, they don’t reach a point of self sustaining profits. I feel this stat is misleading since it only measures financial outcomes of each entity. Is the company alive, or dead? Red or black? Running or shuttered? Successful or not?

A better measure – albeit much more difficult – is to evaluate the impact each person and their endeavors have on the people around them. I guarantee if we were to measure the impact and success of each founder who ventures out on their own by looking at how they affected, influenced and inspired others we’d be talking about a whole different number. I bet it would possibly be the inverse, which would be quite inspirational. We’d be saying something like “Only 10-15% of startups really fail to impact the world so you must go and do it!”

To all those who are currently struggling with what to do and which decision to make for your company right now, heed this advice. The only failure in your situation would have been not choosing to attempt the impossible, since that is the only reason you are able to sit in the chair you are sitting in right now, reading this on your device you are holding in your hand, sipping the drink you are tasting right now, and driving in the car you just drove in.

Success is simply choosing to attempt the impossible and inspiring others to do the same.

The Very First Thing To Do When Opening Your Eyes Each Morning

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Close them for another 10 minutes.

The deeper I go in this industry the more I realize success is determined by the quality of my mental fitness.  It was with that realization I recently started the practice of mediation. This new direction might come to some as a surprise, as it does with me. I’m not a very “spiritual” person and have up until recently thought of mediation and other methods of silence with a “not my kind of tea” nonchalance.

What we view as different we tend to be afraid of and to be very honest I was afraid of meditating. It was just foreign to me. Yet that might be why I found myself in a situation where I was desperately needing it!

I realized in my first month of meditation it’s not as weird, shamanic, spiritual, or cult-like as I thought.  In fact, I realize now that it quite possibly could be the secret to a happy and successful life no matter what country you live in or what religion you claim to believe.

Why?

With so much stimulation, media distraction and impulsive opportunities today, clarity of thought is our most scarce resource. By not taking the time to center oneself in their purpose before they start their day, one may find each day harder and harder to complete. I felt this overcoming me during the last year or two – the subtle feeling of losing my compass and lacking the fulfilling energy of pursuing a direction that aligns with a purposeful life.

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So with a suggestion from my girlfriend – who has been meditating for more than 10 years and glows with its benefits – I jumped in.  Boy do I have a long way to go.  I haven’t established a strongly held habit yet but here’s what I learned in the first month.

1. Calmness.  I found I was becoming more tense as the years went on, and given my laid back nature this was starting to really bug me.  It probably has to do with the nature of our industry and the difficulties of being a founder or working for an early stage company.  As I started the practice of meditation I began to feel the tension ease off a bit.  It’s still there to some extent, but I am now learning how to deal with it and shift the excess energy to a more positive area of my life.

The main reason I feel better is with the consistent nature of meditation you are able to think, ponder, and review; this leading to an adequate evaluation of the difficult things happening over the course of your daily life.  Stress overcomes us not because of something that happens to us, but because we haven’t adequately perceived the reality of the situation and are uncertain of what we are going to do about it.  We lack clarity. My calmness has resulted from taking time each day to let my mind wrap itself around the challenging things developing in my life, and allowing my mind time to determine the next step.

2. Centeredness.  I never really knew what this term meant before starting to meditate, but now I understand the power of allowing your mind to focus on certain aspects of your life, steering away from harmful and negative things while steering towards ones more beneficial. It actually takes effort to think about what you are doing here on earth, what you want to accomplish, how you want to live each day, how you want to treat people each day and the trajectory you want your life to take.  All this becomes clearer when one consistently starts their day in deep thought.  Although just a month in, I am feeling more centered and aligned and I can’t wait to see where the next 6 months or year directs me.

3.  Slowness.  It seems like things are going faster and faster each day.  Computing power speeds up each year, and computers just keep getting smaller and more ingrained into our existence.  Emailing went to text messaging.  Taking pictures with a digital camera and uploading to a website went to snapping a pic and sending a quick Snapchat to a friend. We expect to grab our phone and instantly find a restaurant whenever we are hungry. We also expect a response from someone we communicated with – immediately.  Each day seems to be speeding up and taking our whole society with it. It’s no wonder people are so stressed out.

Meditation has shown me the power of slowness and what it can do in a world where people and ideas are flying by at the speed of light.  Slowness allows for thoughtful consideration of the world around you. It allows for deeper comprehension of all the things happening to you and around you.  There are many things in our world that are simply too complex to fully grasp only after a few seconds or immediately after a meeting.  Not taking the time to allow your mind and body to fully comprehend the world around you is a grave mistake.  Through slowing down and practicing mental clarity each morning I set the tone for a stronger, more agile, more flexible mind which now has a better understanding of when to make quick hasty decisions or to slow down and contemplate all angles of a situation.

Take it from someone who used to shrug off the concept of meditation, you are making a huge mistake by not starting your day with your eyes closed in deep thought about the day you are about to experience.

Is Depression Actually Normal?

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I wrote a post recently touching on my brief bout with Founder Depression.  As a result, many mentioned it on Twitter or reached out to personally thank me for writing it and to let me know they also struggled with it.

This sparked a few thoughts: “Is depression actually normal?”  And “if everyone deals with some sort of depression in their life then what can we do about it?”

I have come to realize depression is something all of us deal with at one point in our lives.  It should not be taboo or anything.  It should be addressed and talked about openly as part of the entrepreneurial education process.  As founders, we encounter depression usually from external events such as failure of a business or a negative outcome of something in which we had hoped for when we first started out.

down-the-drain

I am starting to realize being a great entrepreneur starts by perfecting how to handle the shit in your life.  Because it hits the fan waaaaay more times than you plan.  I have also come to understand the successful ones figure out how to identify the piles in the road ahead of time, and navigate accordingly before they hit something fatal.

Athletes strength train and stretch in prevention of injuries.  Why are we not doing this in the startup community?  Why are we not helping people to prevent what inevitably happens to those of us who strive for more?

The point here is to understand its not IF it will happen, its WHEN it will happen to you.  And then go into your entrepreneurial journey armed with the idea that you will at times feel very down about yourself and your company.  This is reality and this is serious.  If a founder doesn’t take it as such they are potentially setting themselves up for disaster.

Like I did.

In a recent conversation with my father we touched on this.  I noted that only when I realized I had dug myself into such a deep hole emotionally could I fully grasp where I was and what I had to do to get out of it.

I realized even though I was not in control of external events I was in control of my thoughts, feelings and internal dialog. And I was the only one who could bring myself out of the funk in which I had brought myself into.  I had to consciously think and make decisions that would place me in a neutral or positive place.

No more negative self talk.  No more whoa is me. No more pity parties and thinking I had let myself, my family and my community down.  I had to stop fighting myself, put my ego aside and choose a different path.  One that – although it has a few more twists, turns, roundabouts and curves to it – is leading me into an even better position than when I was CEO of my own little startup.

The fact is, if you are a high performer and things don’t turn out exactly the way you planned you will naturally tend to go into a dark place.  Those sort of feelings will not help you move forward in any way whatsoever, so please think now about how you will respond once you sense yourself going down.

The Secret To Launching A Successful Startup

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What’s your secret?

In his book Zero To One, Peter Thiel asks the question “What one thing do you know that no one else in the world knows?  What’s your secret?”

The answer to that question is the secret to starting a successful company.

downloadWhat Thiel is suggesting is there are things in this world you observe, intuitively know and understand more than anyone else.  By peeling apart those layers and understanding where there could be value creation you will find the golden nugget.  Then it’s as simple as creating a new company, building the product and releasing it to the world.

What he is also illustrating here is that success comes from ingenuity and uniqueness, not copying others.  The world doesn’t need another anonymous messaging app or social network.

It needs your secret.

Do you realize there are things only you know about the world?  Most likely there things you continually notice about your everyday life, the city you live in or the technology you use that keep bugging you.  There are problems you continually encounter where you might be wishing someone fixes them.  Do you maybe see a better way to do them?  Do you keep getting frustrated at the same places and times each day?  There might be something you can do about it…

Once we come to grips with the magnitude of this reality starting a company becomes a lot different.  You now realize each and every one of us have the ability to create successful companies.  All it takes is a little focus and observation of the world around you, and then having the fortitude to create a scalable solution.

Today, think about what might not ever be created if you don’t build it?

Finally Emerging From A Founder Depression

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At times we can be our own worst enemy.  The challenge is to minimize those times.

We often hear choosing to become an entrepreneur – and the life that accompanies it – is not for the faint of heart.  This is absolutely true.  But for the longest time I didn’t really understand what it meant.  Or moreover, I didn’t fully respect the ramifications of the simple choice of taking my entrepreneurial leap.

Yet now being on the other side of this experience, I understand on a deeper level what entrepreneurship all about, and how to best navigate through it the rest of my life.  As I describe some of my thoughts and observations, I hope they might resonate with you as well and help you through whatever your situation you might be in currently.

Entrepreneurs, by default, are high performers.  And high performers, by default, are hard on themselves when times get tough.  Combine those two and you could get a deadly combination.

Entrepreneurs hold themselves to higher standards than others and often are disappointed when things don’t necessarily end up as great as they had thought when they initially set out.  But you know what?   Entrepreneurship never ends up like you initially thought.  It’s messier than anyone ever imagines and more extreme than anyone ever describes.

After I experienced a failed startup I dropped into what I now can identify as a depression.  I was not – and am not – depressed as in the clinical sense, but it was more like what you would think when people refer to the last economic depression we recently survived.  It was temporary and externally triggered.  Things weren’t right and I was responding to them certainly in a negative and self deprecating way.

It was painful.  It felt troubling.  It sucked because I wasn’t supposed to be there.  Or so I thought.

What I discovered was I denied myself some truths I should have admitted at the time.  I wasn’t admitting things like: 1) I really didn’t know what I was doing, and neither does anyone else.  2) The business was not working the way we had positioned it.  2) Startups actually do fail!  3) It’s okay to walk away rather than being so committed to a project you drive yourself into the ground.  4) Your personal value is more than just your company’s success.

I did not admit those things and the result was just that – nose dive right into the ground.  Being a friend or family member you probably wouldn’t have known it by being around me.  I am a damn good actor.  I do a great job of burying the issue and grabbing another beer to selflessly talk about your challenges and issues.

Yet deep down inside was some of the worst self talk anyone could imagine.  I was not my biggest cheerleader, supporter, believer and best friend.  If you are wondering, negative self talk is not the path to success.

It took a few years to pull myself out of it.  It took me accepting the fact that although I knew I could be a great founder at some point in my life, now was not the time.  It took me putting my ego aside and accepting positions with other startups and companies where I could add value and learn more about building companies.

It seems elementary now, but letting go of the founder dream and using my skills in an another company was the farthest thing from my mind at the time.  It took me admitting I did not know it all and I need to place myself somewhere to both earn a living and learn more about the world of technology and growing a business around it.

This type of wisdom and perspective is almost impossible when you think you are worthless.  And that is exactly what people think when their startup fails.  They think since they could not make their own company work – one where they pretty much put every ounce of effort they possibly could into making it work – what’s their value anywhere else?  This and other similar thinking is obviously incorrect and ill applied.  Yet, I am telling you this is exactly what I and other founders find themselves thinking.

I have since pulled myself back together, landed a great position with another company here in Seattle and on the path to learning and earning!

The resulting mental and emotional clarity is refreshing. It has allowed me to stabilize my life and opened up space for other projects like Founders RAW, Coinme, and getting back to writing.  It has allowed me to establish myself as a mentor and advisor to other entrepreneurs, here and elsewhere in the world. It has allowed me to embrace and fully enjoy a meaningful relationship for the first time in a long time.

The lesson here is not that you can do things to avoid the founder depression.  More than likely it’s inevitable for you, me and every other entrepreneur.  The lesson is in identifying the oncoming founder depression, quickly observing its symptoms, and then finding mitigation strategies you can deploy to keep you afloat – and happy.

Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart.  But it is for the wise and honest.

3 Startup Principles Every Early Stage Founder Needs To Know

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I recently gave a talk to early stage entrepreneurs at a weekend hackathon in Bellingham, WA.  It was fun, challenging and educational for all.

Given these individuals were just starting on their journey, I chose to focus on things they should be considering coming right out of the gate.  Below are the three things I addressed with them and what I feel every founder needs to think about as they hack together their team and build out a first version of their product or service.

Cofounders

cofounders

The very first thing you must think about is your team – whom should be on it and whom shouldn’t.  Get it right or pay the price later.

Especially when you are starting something at a weekend event like a hackathon or Startup Weekend, it’s tempting to just grab abled bodies from anywhere so you so you can fill empty seats.  This is not advised, since the wrong person on a can bring down the entire ship.  It’s very important to fill specified roles within the team to put your company in the best position to succeed.

Here are the three positions I feel need to be filled if you are considering forming a team to build a software/app based startup:

The Developer.  First – and especially if you are starting something in tech – you’ll need a technical person.  This individual is the one who architects the product and who writes the code. Great engineers are able to balance pragmatism and perfectionism, are not averse to debugging and bugfixing, and employ a healthy skepticism of their code and the world around them. This is the engineer.

The Designer.  Second, you’ll need someone who makes the code look pretty, readable to the layman allowing for a great user experience.  Great designers understand that 90% of good design is not about the pixels, they understand basic coding and have a well rounded view of other sciences of the world.  This is the designer.

The Hustler.  Lastly you’ll need someone who can sell your product, or the one who understands how to get it in the market and found by people.  This is generally the business person, the CEO, and the Hustler.  To quote Fred Wilson, CEO’s really need to just focus on 3 things.  They set the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicate it to all stakeholders. Recruit, hire, and retain the very best talent for the company. And lastly, make sure there is always enough cash in the bank.  That’s the Hustler.

Fill those roles first, or deal with the consequences later.

Customer and User Validation

interview

The second thing early stage founding teams need to think about is finding out who will actually use the product by doing customer discovery and validation.  The knee jerk reaction of most founders is to believe they are so genius they can think up an idea in the shower, grab a few developers to build the app and then sit back and enjoy millions of downloads from all over the world.

NOT-GONNA-HAPPEN.

It’s imperative to get out of the door and talk to actual people who YOU THINK would be your end users.  You need to interview them, asking questions about what problems they are encountering, why they are having those problems and how are they trying to solve them today (they usually just piece together a few random tools to solve it until something better arrives.)  Figure out how they are doing it now so you can offer a solution 10x what is available on the market today.

And rather than trying to plan the entire thing out before talking to customers – like sitting in an office and writing a 30 page business – just start with a hypothesis, do some interviewing and testing on a few good ideas on how to solve it, and then adjust and pivot with the results you observe.  You will learn more in a week or two of testing hypotheses than months/years of preparing a well written business plan full of (mostly) wrong assumptions.

Do your customer interviews now or learn later no one wants what you just built.

Product Simplicity

tip

The last one is a biggie!  It’s paramount a founding team understands their vision, know what they are trying to change in the world and then break it down into approachable pieces to start with.

As a founder you need to think about your entire vision as a large iceberg. The challenge is to find the tip of the iceberg and only release that as the first version. The rest of the iceberg is under water and very large, just as your entire vision is in your head and not visible to the rest of the world. Some think of this as an MVP (minimum viable product) and I concur, I just like the illustration better.

Most founders make the mistake of not finding (or determining) the tip of the iceberg and thus end up building the whole iceberg, resulting in lost time, a bloated product and a lost value proposition.

For every Uber – a very simple and easy to use app – there’s thousands of apps that get it wrong and initially build a too complex product. They end up confusing users and not even getting to the point of an exponential user growth curve.

Twitter was simply a status update and following what others were updating. That’s it and people could easily talk about it and share it with their friends. Snapchat was pictures you could send to friends that disappeared after 10 seconds.  YO was absurdly simple, yet at least it was simple enough where millions of people got it and downloaded the app to mess with friends.

The key is to break down your complex problem into its essence. Know the end game and the large vision but find the simple starting point where millions of people will understand what to do with the app. Find the least amount of features and code possible to solve your initial problem.

These three principles are essential to a successful product launch.  If not paid attention to they will hinder a startup team from building a product, launching it successfully and achieving any traction in the market.

The #2 Founder Sin is Getting Married On The First Date

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Would you ever consider marrying someone after the first date?

Thought so.

Since we are on the topic of Founder Sins (you can read my first one here) let’s talk about the second one real quick.  Another very common thread I see fraying from the rookie founder sweater is how quickly they are considering whom to choose as their cofounders.

“I met this developer at a networking event and I think we’re going to build something together.”

“Do you know anyone who codes?  Do you think they could help me with my idea?”

“The six of us started a company at a Startup Weekend!”

I hear these all the time.  It’s not a bad idea that people are “hustlin” and looking for skilled people to build out their team.  It’s just that it ain’t easy.

Just as dating the right person takes time for the relationship to develop into a marriage, so does a business partnership.  I am not saying you need to “court” the person for years on end, but I am saying it takes more than one event, one week or a few short meetings to grant a random person a large stake in your future company, basically legally binding the both of you.

Las Vegas Welcome Sign 3/30/11

Here’s why I know.  I have lost a cofounder myself.

In the fall of 2011 I was approached by an awesome developer – whom I didn’t know at the time – about joining the founding team of his newly forming startup.  He read an article I had written, emailed me and said we should meet.  When we met for coffee he showed me the prototype of the mobile ordering/payment stystem he was building and said he was looking for a CEO.  I was impressed and intrigued.  We booked another meeting or two and within 2 weeks we were talking “marriage”, better known as personal responsibilities, founder equity and company formation.  Before I knew it I was CEO of a tech startup (Seconds) and diving into leading a founding team I did not know two weeks ago.

But unfortunately, 6 months after that initial meeting he was on a plane moving down to SF to do contract work, leaving me to find another CTO.

What happened?

I am forever grateful for Jacques to have sought me out and single-handedly placing me on this path I am today.  Yet, in hindsight it’s clear we jumped in too quickly.  We were excited, thought time was of the essence and needed to get to work today!  Within a week or two of knowing each other we were having the “how much percentage of the company do you get and how much do I get” conversation.  I was immediately in charge of estimating product timelines, leading a team of developers, laying out our fundraising strategy, talking with the media and figuring out how we’ll make it to the next phase of the company.

All this and I didn’t even know who these people were!

I didn’t know how they handled stress (although I found out pretty quickly!)  I didn’t know how they had performed in the past on other teams and projects.  Did they run from challenges quickly or where they the ones to stick it out and find a solution?  I was not aware of their tell-tale signs of when things weren’t going right.  And I hadn’t learned how to best approach them to talk over difficult situations and touchy subjects.

In the end, I didn’t know them at all.

And now I know why investors ask about the backgrounds of the founders and how long they have known each other.  It’s very important you take the time to get to know people you want to work with in the future.  If you have a long view on your career – your entrepreneurial journey – you will see there’s decades of time for you to work on various projects and many different people you will work well with.

The thing is it’s very hard to determine that after one or two meetings.

Take it from me, it’s best to start laying the foundation for your future cofounder relationships now so that when the time comes for you to form your dream team you will already know who you will pick.

That, or get used to signing divorce papers…

The # 1 Founder Sin Is So Damn Easy To Avoid

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I have noticed a trend recently as I help founders wrap their arms around their ideas and how to best get started.

They come to me with an idea – a problem they have observed in the world – and are devising a unique solution and hopefully in the process attach a kick ass growing business to it.  The problem starts when they try to get too tricky – maybe even too complex – and add all these extra functions and features to their solution.

They create Product Bloat.

This is not good.  It’s the number #1 founder sin.  Yet it’s so easily avoidable.

Why?

It’s the number 1 sin because people think too deeply about what they are trying to do.   Thinking too deeply is not actually the problem; implementing too much and attacking the entire vision right out of gate is.  They also want to be different than others in the market, so they think “well, what if we put this into the app?”  Or “such and such is doing X so we’ll just do Y so we can be different.”

The issue with that type of thinking is it takes you farther and farther away from “problem solving” thinking and puts you closer to “creating something new” thinking.  This is wrong because trying to launch a successful product without solving a clear problem in the world is very difficult, if not impossible.

iceberg

But back to simplicity.  As a founder you need to think about your entire vision as a large iceberg.  The challenge is to find the tip of the iceberg and only release that as the first version.  The rest of the iceberg is under water and very large, just as your entire vision is in your head and not visible to the rest of the world.  Some think of this as an MVP (minimum viable product) and I concur, I just like the illustration better.

Most founders make the mistake of not finding (or determining) the tip of the iceberg and thus end up building the whole iceberg, resulting in lost time, a bloated product and a lost value proposition.

For every Uber – a very simple and easy to use app – there’s thousands of apps that get it wrong and initially build a too complex product.   They end up confusing users and not even getting to the point of an exponential user growth curve.

Twitter was simply a status update and following what others were updating.  That’s it and people could easily talk about it and share it with their friends. YO was absurdly simple, yet at least it was simple enough where millions of people got it and downloaded the app to mess with friends.

The key is to break down your complex problem into its essence.  Know the end game and the large vision but find the simple starting point where millions of people will understand what to do with the app.  Find the least amount of features and code possible to solve your initial problem.

And then release it and gain users.

Once you have your users you can then figure out the next few things to place in the app experience.  But take it from me, don’t commit the number 1 founder sin right out of the gate.

Great Founders RAW Conversation With Brewster Stanislaw Of Inside Social

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This was one of my favorite Founders RAW conversations I have had this past year, with Inside Social founder Brewster Stanislaw.  We talk about fundraising, cofounders, the future of social technology amongst a lot of other stuff.  All around a good guy and a great conversation.

Enjoy.

 

Casting Away Into The Blue Ocean

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AtseaIn a few short days I along with a few others in Seattle will be announcing the launch of a new venture.

What is it you say?

Oh, it’s a surprise.

What I wanted to touch upon right now is the direction we are going and what unknowns it will bring.  Not only are we launching a new product, it’s in an (almost) completely new category.  We are confident in our approach since there are significant signs around the world this new category and technology will be game changing.   We are also confident we are seeing a significant technological innovation and want to be a part of it as early as possible.

But there’s also some downsides.  There’s regulation and government fears.  And when those two things are present there’s always possibilities of shutdowns, arrests and jail time.   We have, are, and will continue to take the correct actions and seek the appropriate counsel in these regards.   There’s also a quite large chasm of consumer education associated with this technology.  We aim to move the sector in the right direction and help average Joe’s understand the nuances of such technology.

So yes, it’s still unproven.  It’s completely blue waters, meaning there’s little to no bloody red water from fierce competition .  This is a blessing and a curse, since we have the opportunity to influence the market and quickly become a market leader.  Yet on the other end, where’s theres massive competition at least you know there’s customers and business to be had.

Can’t have it all!

But I like venturing into blue water, it’s where I feel most comfortable and the most promising.  I like to be on the forefront, testing, innovating and seeing what works and what doesn’t.  Leading, not following.  I don’t like to release metoo businesses.

So, here’s to casting out into the blue waters once again.  I am excited to announce our next project(s) and hope you are too.  I hope you might be willing to jump toward the blue water and join me.

Building Confidence

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My last post talked about the confidence the Seahawks portrayed throughout their Championship season.  In it, I pointed out founders need to embody a confidence about themselves if they want others to follow.

But how do you do embody confidence?

And how do you build it stronger, especially when you are just starting out?

Find, understand and polish your vision

The first step in developing your confidence is to figure out who you really are and why you are doing what you do.  This comes in the form of identifying your vision – the reason for your businesses existence – and putting it in terms others can relate to.  One must ask themselves questions like “why does the world need my idea?” “what is the problem I am solving?”  “what is it that if I gave it to people, and then took it away, they would break down my door and demand back?”  These questions will help define your vision for a better world.

This is especially hard to for technical people since they think more in technical/functional terms, which most laymen don’t understand.  Most people can’t grasp “we are creating a device smaller than a desktop PC, specific to telephony, but can also access hypertext protocol and other applications for utility.”

But, people easily understand “connect with people across the world  from the palm of your hand.”

Get comfortable at rejection

The only way to get a yes is to get through a no first.  Think of the most confident people in your own life, and know they have been rejected more times than most.  A prerequisite to a strong confidence is the ability to take a no, to be rejected and be shot down by others around them.

How do you do that?

Put yourself out there, take investor meetings and allow them to critique your concept and vision.  Ask the smartest people you know to join your startup.  When these people say no, ask why?  Using these inputs, you will learn how to adjust on the fly and what you should change in your approach.

Rejection challenges one’s constitution.  It makes them look in the mirror, take account and look deeper as to why they are doing what they do.

It’s important because like exercise, these negative experiences put the individual into a position to either learn from it and get even stronger in their confidence, or face the reality they need to leave their vision  altogether and go a different direction.  Which road will be taken?  Either way, they are progressing toward a position of more confidence.

Bring more people along with you

Armed with a vision and the strength built up from taking no’s along the way, it’s now time to find others to join you in your pursuit.  Nothing builds more confidence as much as the feeling of people jumping onboard and joining you in your vision.  It’s the social proof principle, meaning the more people that join you, the more other people will want to join you.

The first few hires are always the most challenging, since people will ask themselves “why isn’t anyone else on the team?”  But once you have a team behind you (even a small team) you will feel invincible.  The confidence that comes with teammates standing behind you and convincing others to join their cause is indescribable.  Soon enough you will find yourself actually having to turn away people because they don’t quite fit the profile of who you are looking for.

It all starts with confidence.

Confidence begins when a person knows who they are and where they are going.  They determine that by identifying something in the world they want to change.  Once they can explain it clearly, others will understand and will want to join.  At that point, they will feel unstoppable.

Confidence. Wins.

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Wow, after witnessing one of the greatest sports adventures Seattle has ever experienced I have a few thoughts I think can help us all.

Have Confidence.

Seahawks SB winIt wins Super Bowls.  It also wins in entrepreneurship.

Watching the Seahawks this season was a quick schooling in Confidence 101 and I want to peel away a few layers to get to the bottom of how it can help you.  First let’s take a look at some examples from the team.

Russell Wilson

The dude get’s drafted in the 3rd round and is not even slated to be the starting quarterback his rookie season on a 7-9 team the previous season.  So what’s the first thing out of his mouth?

“I intend on winning 4 Super Bowls in my career, and hopefully all of them here in Seattle.”

He pretty much was laughed at around the league, called short and not a typical NFL quarterback…. Until he went on to become the starter and win his first Super Bowl in only his second year.

Who’s laughing now?

Richard Sherman

Say what you want about Richard Sherman, he’s been dead right all along about who he is.  The dude grew up in Compton, graduated from Stanford and is drafted even lower than Wilson, ending up in the 5th round.  Some would say at that point he was a nobody (a thug) and would be washed up in a few years.  But he’s smarter than that and knows who he is.

During his first few seasons he starts telling everyone in the media and around the league he’s the best cornerback in the league.  He says he can stop anyone, even stop the best offense in the league.  They say he’s just a smack-talker and tell him to be quiet.

And what does he do?

Sherman goes on to back up each and every statement with game defining play-after-play, leading the “Legion of Boom” and helping a Seahawks defense become simply one of the best in NFL history.  Today, there’s no doubt who is the best cornerback in the league.

Marshawn Lynch

Lynch has a different approach to his confidence.  The dude was raised in the rough parts of Oakland, where one says the least amount possible in order to wake up the next morning to live another day.  But through this he learned not to allow the outside world to distract him in his craft and he believes in letting his play and the results speak for themselves.

He goes on to become “Beast Mode”,  lead the league in 100 yard rushing games over the last few seasons and ultimately help his team win a Super Bowl this year.  He does this by not talking to the media the entire season, simply saying “I let my play speak for itself.”

Pete Carroll

Pete was hired as the Seahawks head coach straight from his head coaching job at USC, not the most appreciated school around these parts of the country.  Instantly, he changes the tone of the organization and allows his fun-loving and confident demeanor to permeate the team, winning over the city of Seattle.

He also starts picking palyers out of the draft WAY lower than any other teams would do.  Again, look at our Pro Bowl players and take a look at where in the draft they were taken… so low most other teams passed on these players, thinking they weren’t worth the effort.

Yet, Carrol had the cool confidence that he and his coaches could turn seemly low-level players into World Champions.  And you guessed it, he was laughed at too.  Until he won the Super Bowl with a great collection of well rounded players and coaches.

The thing about all these guys – and the entire Seahawks franchise – is their confidence.  They know deep down inside they are champions.  They absolutely knew the entire season – unbeknownst to the rest of us –  they were going to win Super Bowl XLVIII.

And they acted like it, every day.

I don’t reckon any time hearing “I don’t think we are good enough… we might not win.”

No, they spoke confidence.  The lived it.  They breathed it.  They embodied it. This calm, cool, and collected confidence is what wins in sports.

It’s also what wins in entrepreneurship.

I don’t know any successful founders who are not confident in their own unique way.  I don’t mean arrogance.  I also don’t mean cockiness or being egotistical and flippant in nature.  I am talking about emitting a cool, calm and collected confidence around knowing who you are and where you are going.

Why?

Because people want to follow those who know who they are and where they are going.  People want to believe in their leader(s) and will not tolerate someone lacking confidence, vision and strength.  If we sense our leader lacks any of those characteristics, we simply switch teams, become a free agent and allow another (more confident) founder to recruit us into their vision.

There’s too much to cover here around success and confidence but it’s that last point – knowing who you are and where you are going – that makes the difference between a successful entrepreneur and the ones who can’t quite ever make it.  With all this talk about Seattle founders having more Lynch than Sherman, we might be able to use a little help in building the confidence in ourselves, our community and our companies.

So as a founder, how do you gain confidence in the right areas?  How do you channel your inner Russell, Richard or Marshawn?  That’s for the next post in this series of confidence.  Stay tuned.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Pixelfish.

Chop Wood; Carry Water

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I recently sat down for a great lunch conversation with Nick Soman, a founder friend of mine here in Seattle.  Nick is the founder and CEO of LikeBright and a TechStars graduate.

As we were reminiscing about the founder life he said something quite profound.

Chop Wood; Carry Water.

It’s obviously a nod to early times in society where life depended on staying warm and keeping hydrated.  People couldn’t just hide in their cave if something went wrong, they would eventually die.  Or if successful, they couldn’t just rest on their laurels when something went right.  Simply put, life goes on. They needed to keep chopping wood and carrying water no matter what.

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I believe that thinking applies today.  Actually, the principle applies even more today than ever since we have so many distractions in the palm of our hands and right in front of our faces.

If you have experienced something exhilarating, exciting and greatly advantageous for you or your business, the question is what do you do next?

You need to chop wood; carry water.

If you are down and out, struggling with life and fighting the feelings of disappointment the question is what are you going to do tomorrow?

You need to chop wood; carry water.

The point is you need to stay alive.  You need to keep working.  You need to keep doing what got you that advantageous opportunity in the first place.  And if you have hit a negative streak you need to just keep going, things will come back if you get back into the game and work on the basics.

Successful people make it a habit to be steadfast in their ways – they don’t get too high when things go well and they don’t get too low when things get challenging.  They stay even keel.

They keep chopping their wood and carrying their water no matter what happens to them.

I like that.  And it’s what I have been telling myself lately as I have been enduring some exciting times.

I hope you do as well.

What’s Your Story?

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Have you ever thought about this question?

“What’s my story?”

I attended an event last night where the speaker talked about startups and creating a story around them as you build.  He then had a slide that simply said “what’s your story?” meaning what’s the company’s story you will be telling others, such as future employees, investors, and customers.   His whole point was a major differentiator between your company and all the others is the story behind it.  I liked where he was going with it but I think it can be taken to a much deeper level.

tell-me-a-story2

What’s your story?

Do you know the meaning of the life you are living right now?

Why are you doing what you are doing?

Does company you are starting or the job your are current in have a strong story and purpose behind it?

Why does the company exist?

Does it connect with people on an emotional level and add value to their life?

Are you doing something just to make money or are you also creating value in the world?

Yes, these are deeper and more serious thoughts than revenue models and exit strategies but they need to considered or one day you’ll wake up wondering what the hell you have been doing for the last decade or two.

I don’t know about you but I don’t ever want to have that feeling.  I’m not perfect and nowhere near where I want to be in this department but I am glad I am reflecting on thoughts like these.  They are definitely influencing my next moves.  I hope they help you as well.

If you need some help in this area, listen to Scott Harrison tell his story about Charity: Water.

5 Tough Questions To Ask When Starting Your Company

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So, you want to start a company?

Awesome.  That’s a very exciting decision but first you must make sure it’s the right decision.

Startups are hard and have been referred to as “a full contact sport” by others so deciding to be a founder is only the right decision if you are ready and willing to except what comes with founding a startup.

Coincidently I am going through this same thinking process right now.  Even though I have started a few companies before, I find myself at the starting line once again evaluating a new “dent in the universe” idea with a fellow co-founder.  Here are five questions I am asking myself right now to help determine if it’s the right decision.  I believe they can that help you too along your path to starting your next company.

thinking-manAm I really an Entrepreneur?

Risk is the heart of entrepreneurship — which is defined as “the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.” Your relationship with risk is the sole determinant whether you will succeed or fail as an entrepreneur.

Are you ready to take a risk?  I encourage you to think of yourself as an entrepreneur in the adjective form, not a verb.  What do I mean?  Well, during my first startup I struggled – a lot, and for a long time – and it really bothered me because I didn’t really know why I was struggling.

Then it finally hit me.

It all changed when I re-thought what the dream actually was.  I realized my dream wasn’t about what I was working on at the time, but more about the person I was becoming in the process.  The dream is about being an entrepreneur – the adjective – not the noun.

Entrepreneur – noun.  A proprietor who owns their own business.  A title.

Entrepreneur – adjective.  A person who embodies the qualities of being Courageous. Risk Taker.  Innovative.  Persistent.  Agile.  Intelligent.  Savvy. Strong.  Personable.  Creative.  Excellent. Fighter.  Winner. 

Once I realized all I needed to do is change me perspective of who I was, everything changed.  Also, I realize being an entrepreneur was all about how I viewed and embraced the world of risk.

Fellow entrepreneur and billionaire Sir Richard Branson follows a principle called “protecting the downside,” which means that by looking at any situation and determining all options before making a decision, one can identify the worst case scenario and work backwards from there to find the optimal route forward. Protecting the downside is really just identifying and understanding risk.

So your first step is all about asking if you can handle a world full of risk.

Am I ready?

Once you determine you are cut from the entrepreneurial cloth, you must ask yourself if you are actually ready.  Is it the right time to embrace a life of high risk and high reward?

Question yourself on things like: Do I have more important responsibilities, such as family obligations, debt to repay, volunteer work, coaching youth sports, or things that require your time and energy?

The reality is startups take pretty much all of your time and energy.  They are like rockets going to space – it takes A LOT of energy to take off but based on physics it takes less energy to keep going as it gets higher and farther away from earth.

Step 2:  sideline some of these major responsibilities if you are to start a high growth company, and  then pick them back up once things really get going.

Am I passionate about the idea?

Once the commitment has been made and you believe you are ready to take the plunge, you should ask if this is something you are really interested in, passionate about, and willing to give it 5-10 years of your life.

This is somewhat of a controversial topic.  Some say founders need not be passionate about a startup, simply because only possessing passion for a subject does not guarantee success.  And I agree.  Just being fanatic and uber-excited about something is not a shoe-in for startup success.  But consider the opposite: if a person is not particularly interested in a subject and not emotionally driven to solve a particular problem in the world, will they be able to make it through the trough of sorrow?

I think not.

Step 3 requires asking yourself if you posses energy, curiosity and passion about what you are doing so you can withstand the inevitable challenges and be able to push through the hardships you will face.

Is it a big and growing market?

Startup fact: Investors are looking for home runs, not singles.

One of the biggest mistakes first time founders make is not evaluating markets correctly and picking a market with low potential for growth.  Most investors and potential acquirers evaluate startups on the recipe of future potential.  A founder who desires a successful outcome for their company should look for solutions to problems in growing markets.

What is a growing market?

Growing markets are ones with an accelerating rate of competitors, users, revenue potential, and aligned with emerging technologies/platforms.   Founders should build their solution with forward thinking perspectives on technology and societal norms.  (ie: mobile usage vs desktop usage,  network platforms vs non viral sites, portable vs non portable tech, etc…)

Even if a founder is not planning to accept outside investment and wants grow from a bootstrapped position, it still makes sense to look for market that is big and growing.

Step 4 requires one to ask themselves, “no matter the size of my ambition, am I building for tomorrow, not just today?”

What are my unique gifts?

Startups are difficult and require one to utilize their unique talents and gift in ways they may have never imagined before.  When a founder starts their company, it’s important they take some time and take into account their naturally gifts.  Are you uniquely technical and have the ability to quickly whip together a simple prototype?  Or are you more social, amazing with people, a natural salesman and can easily work a room full of investors?  Are you a visionary or an operations person?

This is probably the hardest question of the bunch, but the most important because the answer to these questions will point to your next phase of the company – recruiting others.  If you are non-technical and (most likely) better with leading people, you will need to find a technical person to balance your founding team out and help you build products.   If you are highly technical and can easily hack together websites and mobile apps, you will need to find someone who is less technical but more gifted in the business and people operations.

The last step pulls you inward to understand yourself, what your talents are, and who you should look to bring on and join you in your new venture.

Asking yourself these 5 tough questions should not only help determine if this decision is a good one, but if it is the right one for you at this time.