The academic’s startup trap.
Mistakes made by humans whose intellect may hurt them.
Academic: not of practical relevance; of only theoretical interest.
TLDR; You can get stuck out of fear of simply starting any business (even when you have a roadmap). Contrary to popular believe this isn’t the only group of people who get stuck. Another reason to get stuck is having so much ambition and intellect that you want to think big and change the world. This per definition means doing something entirely new or in a new way. Here you can get stuck as well. To get unstuck you (and to get those big ideas) you just need to start with something. Even if it sounds dumb.. because momentum will inspire those great ideas. So at the very least share your unique thoughts on social.. so you have users with whom you can test you next idea.
The full spectrum
When people think of wantrepreneurs, they only refer to people on one end of the spectrum. The people who’re scared and just have difficulty getting started. On the other side, we have entrepreneurs. These guys just do it and create something.
This is the entire spectrum.
Except it’s not..
First I’d argue that the majority of people who call themselves entrepreneurs aren’t entrepreneurs at all.
In the literal sense an entrepreneur is a person who sets up a business taking on financial risks in the hope of profit. A lot of people are actually freelancers. Their business only makes them money when they work. They are basically hiring themselves out and are charging by the hour.
Secondly I wanna make a clear distinction between an entrepreneur and what most people reading this aspire to, a startup founder.
Starting a barbershop in your own home may qualify you as an entrepreneur but that’s not what we are after.
The ‘entrepreneurs’ (who should be classified as startup founders) we look up to are the people who’ve created new things. Not copied existing ones. Google vs. a restaurant. SpaceX vs. a barbershop. These guys weren’t founders of a barbershop and worked particularly hard. Their startup’s DNA was different from the start.
And that’s the other side of the spectrum to get stuck in.
You’re deep desire to create something that has a major and meaningful impact on the world can become paralyzing.
Elizabeth Gilbert talks about how (in this TED talk) she felt stuck after Eat, Pray, Love.
Now it’s important to realize that it’s not past success that causes one to get stuck, rather the standard you hold yourself to. If you have such extremely high expectations of yourself coupled with the idea you have to get it right in 1 go.. well, then it’s only logical one wouldn’t get started.. Not out of fear, but due to overwhelm.
In the ‘How to start a startup’ Sam Altman talks about bad ideas.
He explains that while he agrees idea’s aren’t as important as execution, ‘the pendulum has swung way out of whack. A bad idea is still bad and what you want is an idea that looks bad but is actually good.’
[If you’re not familiar with this concept.. Peter Thiel was one of the first imo to clearly articulate that ideas that obviously seem good are actually bad. They only seem good because everyone is doing them, if everyone is doing them you’re not being original. That means there is an established roadmap which in turn means you’re deeply competing with everyone else.]
What you actually want is an idea that is undervalued, meaning there are no buzzwords, no hype and even better.. it just seems flat out stupid to people.. but it’s actually good. If you have a clear idea why it’s actually a good idea you can pursue that with much less competition.]
I think Sam Altman and Peter Thiel are right in theory but wrong in practise. A bad idea isn’t always bad.
Mathematically speaking a bad idea is always bad, because you’ve used that noun to label ‘idea’. In the same way a green apple can’t be red. But in practise, it’s possible that ‘a bad idea’ get’s labeled bad unjustly. This is problematic.
Another problem occurs when you take said ‘bad idea’ and it could have lead to a better quality problem or unforeseen opportunities.
But the biggest problem of all is that in your quest to find an idea that isn’t bad (or that looks bad but you know is good) you get stuck.
Your subconscious brain starts to filter out all ideas and they don’t even arise in your conscious mind anymore.
It’s not that you consciously dismiss them, you just stop getting them in the first place.
Now we’re in a bad place.
We don’t wanna pursue good ideas that we know are good.
We don’t wanna pursue bad ideas cuz well, they seem bad..
oh uh..
This is the intellectual trap logically thinking, highly driven folks who wanna start a startup find themselves in.
How to escape the trap..
Let’s use a weight loss metaphor. (If you don’t wanna read this skip to this is why Peter and Sam are wrong.)
What is the most effective way for a person to lose weight?
Any answer an intellectual person will come up with tends to be wrong. The more you’ve done your homework the more likely you are to be wrong, because you know all the ins and outs. Your expertise can actually hurt you.
‘’Depending on their body fat percentage 10–15 or 15+ they have to either drastically cut calories 30+% or they do a medium deficit 20%. Anything higher with sub 15% body fat will likely cause energy deficits to be taken out of muscle instead of fat. The macro’s will look something like 50% protein–30% carbs–20% fat. Protein needs to be consumed at about 40g every meal. with a 5 times a week 1,5h lifting schedule focussed on both heavy lifting (3–5 reps * 5 sets) and hypertrophy (12 reps *7 sets) with a push — pull — legs split. On the 2 off days the subject needs to do HIIT cardio. Balls to the wall, going to puke cardio.. going all out, 10–30 sec sprints 4–10 times.’’
And you’d be completely wrong.. we’ll on paper you’d get an A. But this ain’t paper.. This shit for realsies.
Let’s analyze this situation.
First of all, the person doesn’t want to lose weight. He or she wants to do a body recomposition. If you wanna lose weight stop drinking for a day and do a little exercise. You’ll look better on the scale.. you’re welcome.
But that’s obv not the goal. The goal is to look better which translates into more muscle and less body fat.
So now that we’ve determined what a person is after we need to think about how they’ll achieve that.
We need to ask.. will this person be at or significantly closer to their goal in 5–10 years?
If our person had to implement that theoretical knowledge, they’d fail on day 0. They wouldn’t even attempt it.. sweet baby jezus.. look at how overwhelming that looks and I didn’t even cover supplements or go in depth on nutrition, workouts, workout techniques/variables, sleep etc.
The only thing that matters in the early days is changing human behavior.
You do that by making the initial hurdle AS SMALL AS POSSIBLE! The goal should NOT.. I wanna emphasize this again.. should NOT be to do a body recomp as soon as possible.
The goal should be to do it as effectively as possible. One outstanding day, followed by 2 years of never doing that shit again is hardly effective.Perceived ‘wasting’ of 3 months while the subject is very gradually building up new habits which will mean that they’re still at it 5 years from now.. That’s effective.
It took said person a long time to create the opposite habits from what he/she wants.. it’s gonna take a while to build up new habits. This should NOT be a matter of motivation.
The value of the delta (change in behavior) multiplied by time is what’s important.. And if the delta is incredibly small then the chances of time being high increase significantly. Thus optimizing the total value.
So the answer to the question ‘What is the most effective way for a person to lose weight?’should be this:
It depends on how much experience that person has in this behavior. A natural bodybuilder who’s been training for 5years could be given the advice above cuz he’ll implement it.. he’s already used to cutting (body fat) each year..
But more likely the person asking this is a person who’s new to this. For him/her the barrier needs to be as low as possible. (pick the smallest task, make it smaller, even smaller, little bit smaller.. that last one will probably be good.)
So an overweight person should just start with a daily 20 second walk. 10 sec out of the house and 10 sec back in. It’s not the exercise that’s important.. it’s the changing of that mental code.. and you do that by taking unbelievably small steps and gradually building it up. After a week that walk becomes a little longer, and longer and longer and eventually that person can go to the gym once a week, twice, 3 times, slowly start introducing better nutrition etc.
That’s how you tackle changing behavior.
This is why Peter and Sam are wrong.
If you only had 1 shot and weren’t allowed to make mistakes they’d be right. But you don’t, and you are.
The number 1 reason why intellectual/academically inclined founders fail is because the never start.
Because they are so smart and driven they know how to do research, read books, read papers, read everything PG ever wrote, all the biographies, all the Elon, Peter, Max, Reed -and the rest of the paypal mafia- talks, the entire how to start a startup and blitz scaling series and on and on..probably multiple times each..
It’s not that this behavior is stupid (I don’t believe in stupidity but in ignorance instead but that’s a thesis for another time), it’s actually very logical.
It’s what you get when you ask a smart biological computer to optimize towards building a roadmap.. except the roadmap does not exist. So it keeps searching for answers until it concludes that the likelihood of that map existing is approaching zero (cognitive dissonance).
The problem in this world of information overload is that may take a while. It’s so easy to go to the next book/YT lecture etc.
You know you have what it takes to make a serious dent in the world. So you’ve ruled out small businesses because you want to build the next google.
You also know good ideas aren’t good. But because you don’t wanna waste time on an idea that’ll turn out to be bad.. bad ideas get thrown out as well.. and tada we got ourselves an error.
What’s the solution
The solution is to realize momentum is king. Nothing is more important than moving forward. Accept that you will make a lot of mistakes and that as smart as you are.. you can’t think your way out of this. You’ve got no clue where to start and anything you come up with can be taken down by a few logical statements in your head..
The good ideas disguised as bad ones are incredibly fragile.
So where should you start? And when?
You start right here.
And you start right now.
I think one of the best places to start is to do a small business / project or something that may seem like a waste of time. But just like the person who wanted to lose weight.. we need to walk 10 seconds. The goal isn’t to start Facebook rn.. the goal is to just start moving while keeping that in the back of our head.
Set a timer for 5 minutes.. come up with a few things you could do.. select a default.. Now you have a couple minutes to pick one.. If after the timer goes off you’re still stuck go with the default idea.
Don’t accept anymore postponing. Reading a book isn’t you being productive it’s escaping, you’ve read enough.
Can you start a blog and share some quick thoughts.. Can you upload some things you made for fun on instagram.. just do something.. get momentum.
If you’re stuck.. I help founders for free at Circle And Dot you’re welcome to hit me up anytime.
Xoxoxo
RJ
