Notes from the Entrepreneurial Underground

You want to be an entrepreneur? Let’s start with a dash of cold water. Don’t bother reading books or blogs about how to do it. In fact, here’s a challenge question: Ask a few notable entrepreneurs what book or writer was most instrumental in their success? I’m betting big that you are not likely to come away with something you can get from the bookstore.

Having said that, and having lived through several decades of entrepreneurial life, I do believe there is practical value in sharing experiences. There is no standard script to plug yourself into, but there may be value in checking others’ data points. So here are a few standout recollections from quite a few years of ‘in the trenches’ experience.

Let me also state from the get-go that an ill-conceived idea is not made viable by pulling out an entrepreneur’s how-to bag of tricks. But let’s start with the assumption that you’ve come up with a cool idea and a solid business proposition. You’ve thought about it a great deal, analyzed it to your satisfaction, worked up a plan. You believe in it enough to put yourself on the line for it. Now what? Besides money and hard work, what else do you need? Well, a few things.

Resilience

First, you should have a talent for resilience. Can you bend without breaking? Things never quite go according to plan —that’s almost a fundamental law of startup business. And when they don’t, how do you regroup, keep a cool head, plot your next move? Successful entrepreneurs don’t panic. Hemingway’s notion of ‘grace under fire’ will stand you in good stead when those around you are losing their heads. Plan A doesn’t work? There are 25 more letters in the alphabet …

Persistence

Persistence is the handmaiden of resilience. Successful entrepreneurship can be much like a war of attrition. In my case I attribute my handful of successes to persistence more than any other factor. In the early days of Computer Graphics World magazine, the low point was when I put out a July issue in November (took me that long to ransom it from the printer). I doggedly hung in, pulled things together one step at a time, and less than two years later was bought out by a large publishing company. In my case, persistence was not an innate talent, but rather a forcibly learned experience. I got in so deep, so quickly, that I had no graceful way out other than to hang on and scramble for daylight.

But with another publication startup, I had a partner who simply didn’t have entrepreneurial stamina and got cold feet when Plan A sputtered, and forced us to bail rather than pivot or gut it out. To this day I remain convinced that we could have broken through had we persisted a bit longer.

Collaboration

Speaking of partners, the odds rarely favor going it alone. Legendary startup partnerships abound in the history of technology. Jobs/Wozniak, Gates/Allen. These are more the norm than flukes. And when things go sour, misery loves company (okay, mostly kidding on this one, but not entirely). Our culture cherishes the imagery of the lone gunslinger, single-handedly defying the odds, but in real life they are the exception.

Seek collaboration. Don’t be afraid to reach out for help or support. Too much is made of the paranoia of protecting your ideas. Good ideas are cheap currency, with an enormous gap between knowing something and doing something about it. Collaborators can become your strongest assets.

Numbers

Know all your numbers cold – understand them at the deepest possible level. Big ideas come to life through the effective control of a lot of numbers. If you’re the top gun, it’s incumbent on you to live and breathe your numbers, the vital statistics that define the health of the business. You can delegate bookkeeping and accounting, but you’re the one who has to really understand the metrics of your operation – and the consequences when the numbers change. This is your reality base.

Versatility

Be ready to “do it all” There are strongly varying opinions on this, and for good reason, but I like this notion a lot. In a startup business with a handful of people covering a lot of ground, a good entrepreneur will be able to step into any role that is critical at any moment. It’s not necessary to excel at everything, but to know and understand each role enough that one can keep the wheels turning.

Network, Communicate

Successes never happen in a vacuum. Or as the result of a mad genius hidden away in a cave thinking up The Next Great Thing. We live in an age made possible by networking. The more connected you are, the better your odds. The bandwidth of possibilities always increases as a multiple of your network.

If you don’t feel you’re a natural communicator, then this is the time to learn some new tricks. Your brilliance and your breakthrough ideas won’t avail you much if they’re trapped behind the firewall of inarticulateness. Feeling shy? Get over it!

Confidence

Believe in yourself. If you don’t, forget this. Go get a regular job. Self confidence, the ability to remain buoyant as well as resilient, is a characteristic of virtually all successful entrepreneurs. Here is where a little bit of ego can be a very good thing! Most important, if you don’t fully believe in yourself, others won’t. And then you’re screwed.

Sell, sell, sell!

If you believe in yourself and your enterprise, you must make others believe as well. You may think you’re not the “sales type” but the fact is you are going to have to make strangers believe in you. Investors need to really want to give you money. No matter how great your idea or product is, almost every investment professional will tell you that they really invest in the people ahead of the business proposition. Every business has to sell something. In the early stages you are likely the one having to do the selling. Even if it’s not in your nature, this is where you will really have to step up your game.

Now, forget all this. Get out there and make something happen!