Startup Success Isn’t Measured By The Volume Of Noise

We had spent 3 months of our lives building a prototype of our product — we talked with mentors, tested our pitch, revised our vision and honed our voice. Now “demo day” was here. Our product was neither groundbreaking (I refuse to say “disruptive”) nor innovative, but it was effective and functional; a proof of concept. Chris stood at the podium and made our 10 minute pitch — the problem, our audience, the solution, our strategy and potential markets — in front of over 350 mentors, business people and investors. When all the pitches were done, we eagerly waited amongst the crowd inside the clubhouse at Great American Ballpark. A few people congratulated us, said they loved our idea, gave us a business card and moved on. We waited more. And waited more.

We had cast our line into the “startup” waters but managed to catch nothing.

What started as a dare from J.B. Kropp (to apply to the local Cincinnati start-up accelerator The Brandery) turned into $25,000 and a chance to build something we believed could be pretty great. We went in with just an idea (making chores fun) and a logo and ended with a fully functional product (scaleable? no). But it seemed it was not meant to be. At the very least, we were happy to have succeeded in executing our vision, then said “oh well” and prepared to move on.

But then suddenly we got funded.

Then funded some more. And everything changed. Suddenly, we are a real startup, with shareholders and a board of directors and employees (our CTO and iOS Developer) and fairly consistent press in the likes of Mashable, BoingBoing, Wired, and The New York Times.

Despite a handful of good press and having the funding to continue our business, we remain largely unknown, certainly not tech “sexy” and very much away from the spotlight and glamor of other startup superstars. While we may not have the flair or panaché of the superstars, that doesn’t mean our product is unimportant or unsuccessful.

The vast majority of startups are not superstars. But often the expectations of a new startup are measured against the superstars. You hear the repeated storyline of a young, new startup from Silicon Valley who is about to raise a seed round of $10 million because they gained over one million users in a very short amount of time and now there are rumors that [Facebook/Twitter/Google] is going to acquire them. And here we are, a midwestern based product, making a lifestyle app for kids, who hasn’t (yet) reached a million users, operating on money that wouldn’t last a week for a superstar startup. It’s difficult to fight that pressure to conform and not feel like a failure if you don’t. Yet despite those unspoken expectations, I know we are a success.

Such lofty expectations are simply implausible, unrealistic and often damaging to a young startup. Your success can’t be defined by the benchmarks set by your predecessors. Whether you have a physical product or an app, are bootstrapping, raising venture capital or (gasp) generating revenue, there is no single recipe for success. But there is for failure. The surest way to fail is to compromise your goals and vision to compete with distracting presumptions about what success looks like for your product. And believe me, it’s an easy trap to fall prey.

I’m here to tell you — don’t be discouraged. Success comes in many forms. Your greatest measure of success is by the opportunities you have to continue to operate and grow.

Success isn’t defined by how much noise you create but by how much progress you achieve.