Don’t kid yourself
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Why it can be easy to optimise for the short-term
From writing these pieces, I was amazed by how many times I wrote the phrase, “don’t kid yourself”. At EF, we see teams run out of will power, but we also see many teams that are kidding themselves; they mistake stubbornness for tenacity.
When you’re in the early days of starting a startup, sometimes it can feel like there are only two things to optimise for: having a team and having an idea. This makes you feel safe, successful even. You have come from an education system that sets short-term targets where you are rewarded for achieving them; it can be hard to get out of that mindset. But prioritising these two things is like saying ‘all that matters is that I have a startup’. This can feel safe, but it’s prioritising the short-term and can be potentially damaging to your long-term success.
At EF, we help the cohort find the optimal use of your time and this includes sense checking whether they are kidding yourself. The optimal use of your time is to be building something you care about, that people want, with someone you respect.
The magic trio
It can be easy to feel that you have that magic trio, but I would advise that you take a good look at whether that’s true. Often, if you took a step back and thought about what you were doing, you would know that it was wrong. It’s that gut feeling. And it could be about the idea, the team or even being a founder.
You wouldn’t take a job that you didn’t care about
By choosing to to build a startup you’ve already shown that you’re not the kind of person that would end up in a job they hated just for the sake of it.
Bear that in mind when you are deciding on the idea area that you pursue. If you can’t imagine joining your startup as an employee then you probably shouldn’t be founding that startup.
At EF, this is one of the most common areas where we see people kidding themselves (and it’s particularly hard for us to spot this one). If you say you are a passionate ping pong enthusiast, it’s hard for us to disagree. Make sure you can show evidence for your obsession. Read my post on ‘Where good ideas come from pt 1’ for more details on this.
You wouldn’t try to build a startup that had no users
You wouldn’t build a startup if you couldn’t get users, this would be pointless. Yet, it’s amazing how many ‘founders’ kid themselves that they have users, when if they stepped back they would see the reality of a handful of family and friends giving them pity support.
The other way to kid yourself is to believe that users care about your product. Perhaps it’s because you were afraid to ask that poignant question that would have showed the truth, perhaps you didn’t probe the customer relationship to see how sturdy it was, perhaps you are delaying the release of the product because you are afraid of how users will receive it.
Remember, if your users don’t care, you don’t have a startup, you have a folly. The way to salvage this situation is to recognise it, learn from it and iterate. Realising you are building something no-one wants is often the first step on the path to building something people do want. (Make sure you read my post on traction).
You wouldn’t get married to someone you had doubts about
There are a lot of founding-a-startup/getting-married analogies floating around, and they’re right. It’s a long-term commitment to one person where your future success is strongly aligned. So why do we see EF teams kidding themselves about their co-founders? We see individuals make excuses for their concerns about their co-founders; ‘it will change when we’re less stressed’, ‘we haven’t hit the perfect idea yet’, ‘it does annoy me, but it doesn’t matter that much’.
Don’t optimise for being in a team, because you will get divorced. Doubts that arise when you are a two person team, with no real pressure from customers and investors, will only escalate to full blown disagreements when the shit hits the fan.
Think hard about your team. Two things matter 1) Do you respect each other? 2) Are you productive? Don’t optimise for the safe feeling being in the wrong team may give you.
You don’t want to be the one that ‘fails’
Saying you are a founder of a startup does not make you a founder — you have to build something. Some of you will find that the challenge suits you, others will find that it may not be the right time. Don’t kid yourself about this.
Often you will know when it’s not working. When you don’t want to come into the office anymore, when you don’t like your customers, when you start pursuing an idea and you know your heart isn’t really in it.
There is nothing wrong with stopping. The beauty of starting a startup is that it will make you a million times more employable — particularly by other startups.
If you don’t enjoy the sweat, blood and tears that comes with founding, it may be that now isn’t the time. Stop beating yourself up, join a startup. Come back to it in a year when you have had time to sort your head out. It’s no big deal.
To conclude…
Part of being a good founder is about taking the time to step back and reflect, about prioritising the long-term over the short term (even if that means leaving a safe short-term solution). It’s very easy to get caught up in the excitement of starting a startup and in the process losing sight of why you are even doing that in the first place. Do not optimise for having a startup. Optimise for building something you care about, that people want, with someone you respect. If this isn’t true, take a real good look at what you’re doing. Don’t kid yourself. It’s just a waste of time.
