The Last One Picked In Gym Class
“Couldn’t [insert big company name] just do that in like, a week?”
If you’re an entrepreneur, someone asked this when you first started sharing your idea. Friends. Investors. Family. Yourself.
This is a completely rational reaction. Why wouldn’t a bigger, more well-resourced company do a better job creating [whatever]? But if you’re going to take the plunge and start a business, you have to believe in underdog stories. NY Giants in 2008. Douglas v. Tyson. The Miracle on Ice. You tell yourself that even Rome fell.
But who are we kidding, you stay nervous. You stay scared. And you use that to fuel your focus. Focus, focus, focus. That’s the key. You repeat it in your head over and over again like Mugatu in Zoolander. We are solving our specific problem and we know how to do it better than everyone else. This is the mantra. Rinse, wash, repeat.
We started Scoop amidst a transportation revolution. I remember when we first met with investors, they scoffed at the idea of carpooling. “It’s never worked, and if it can, the big guys will do it first.”
Within six months, the story shifted to what an attractive space carpooling had become. But, the conclusion was still the same: the big guys can do it more easily. 18 months after Scoop was born, we still hear it all the time. And we worry about it all the time.
Because we should! The most well capitalized, biggest companies in the world at war over the roadways. We’d be idiots not to realize this. But that doesn’t mean the underdog can’t win. It doesn’t mean the little guy can’t change the world.
At first, we saw incumbents borrow our features to bring products to market. Now, we’re seeing bigger players pull back from our space. Sure, they have larger user bases, deeper pockets, and more technology. But they also have distractions and split priorities. We just stay focused on solving the problem of the daily commute.
It’s lot easier to do this when you’re on a mission to solve a real problem. Scoop is about one thing: removing congestion from our communities and giving life back to commuters. I’ve always said if another company takes 100M people off the road, so be it — the world will be a better place.
Not being afraid to fail makes you powerful.
Innovation is born out of a relentless desire to see change happen. It doesn’t matter what resources you have. What matters is how passionate and focused you can remain on that end goal. What matters is how well you execute. Of course you should pay attention to what the big dogs are doing. But don’t get distracted. You can’t let anyone tell you that someone else can do it better than you.
For a brief moment today, we’ll exhale. Then we’ll start worrying ourselves with the same old questions. If this problem is too big for them to solve, how will we do it? What other giants will we have to defend against?
We don’t really have answers to these questions. What we do know is that cars are still honking outside our office and there’s still gridlock on our streets. There’s a problem to be solved and we have to stay focused on solving it. We’ll just stay crazy enough to believe that a small group of dedicated, passionate people can do just that.
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Jon Sadow is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Scoop, the fully-automated carpooling solution for your daily commute. Prior to founding Scoop, Jon spent 5 years at Google in both Product Management and Business Development. Jon is a graduate of the George Washington University in Washington DC, and now lives in San Francisco with his wife, Michelle, and their dog — and Scoop mascot — Kugel.
