The Paradox of Longterm Thinking for Startups

Successful businesses that generally think about the long term strategy will do better. However, startups must think about doing well in the short term. A startup does not have endless capital and needs to able raise capital and recruit employees. Consequently, it needs to have milestones it can easily demonstrate to investors. Investors and potential job applicants like to invest and join market leaders. Therefore, initial early success leads to the startup getting more capital and employees that its competitors will not get. Thus, short term leads can have an outsized impact on longterm results.