Perseverance and Seeing Its Virtues Amidst the Trees.

I like people from Texas maybe most because they can say things like “That dog don’t hunt” and it is usually as learned and insightful as six paragraphs from the quintessential Upper Westside cocktail party attendee. Jack Kemp, the former Congressman, now deceased, nailed it when he said “capitalism requires capital”. I think he said it anyway, it doesn’t really matter to my story.

I have been an entrepreneur many times over and rarely have I had the capital that I needed, all at once. With one company, Skyjet, I did. It was with the support of a visionary and supportive investor, Craig Hall that I was able to plow ahead and try and succeed and fail and learn and succeed and exit with a sale to a company called Bombardier.

Money from Craig was not promiscuous, it was smart. When I asked for $300,000, he said you’ll need more and gave me $450,000 with a modest milestone to achieve. He gave me the rest of the money that he had promised before I hit the milestone.

Many investors would take a different approach but knowing that I had capital allowed me to maximize success for the opportunity. I couldn’t hire brand name superstars but I could hire smart, talented people for the right positions. I could do partnerships that were meaningful with time to let them succeed.

I had access to him so if I had a derivative idea, I could discuss it. If it was good there would be capital.

When that doesn’t happen — when there isn’t capital ahead of the challenge, you lose time. You strain relationships promising ahead of where you would be if you could afford to be more measured. You still have great ideas but they are not executed as fast or as competently as you wish, so everything takes longer. The ideas or business models don’t get refreshed as you try to prove your plan. Your investors become more like creditors because they know you are not capitalized for experiments which is a lot of what a start-up is.

Perseverance looks good at 40,000 feet but less good when you are having to answer to a reluctant existing investor: do you have a plan B? Worse when it is a family member drawing out the ask for help to seven days preceded by weeks of silence. At that moment, no one is willfully wrong. It is like American Express declining a purchase that is outside of your normal spending pattern. They just know and they are probably right.

Sometimes I wish people could see what I see. All nighters. Inspired work. A vision that may be longer than an elevator ride and compelling because of it. But in the middle of perseverance the perseverance is the only virtue.

The good thing about getting the right support once — and along the way here and there — is that you know that holding onto your vision is everything even on its toughest day. The right support pays it forward for the one where you don’t get everything that you want with the right timing. It is still tough to see the virtue of those values like perseverance when you are in the middle of the perseverance. No one comes and says “thanks for asking me for my help so that you can persevere” — even when it is something that will benefit them too.

The moral of the story is not known in the middle of the battle. And that is where I will leave it, mid-battle.