Advocating for founders to have a Plan B
Don’t be the Neanderthals, be Homo Sapien. This image has so many problems but I see ones just like it and hear from founders and investors who think the same thing. Entrepreneurship is not about self-help and feel-good posters, it’s about building something you are passionate about, that people love and ultimately that those customers will pay you for.
Not a straight path but a curve (damn, now I'm doing it..)
This is the embodiment of the problem, this one image, and I’m sick of hearing this stupid axiom from founders and investors and apparently from well-regarded business programs.
In the real world, plans change. The markets define success and acceptance or the lack thereof. The best-laid plans of mice and men and all… You are a startup so you can be flexible, adapt, move faster, and succeed. Isn’t that why you didn’t go into <insert other big slow moving cash cow industry here>?
A key to success is being able to figure out you were wrong, or that the idea wasn’t as big as it seemed, and course correct rather than flaming out and losing it all.
Theranos is now hitting bottom and is very likely a scam so it seems the culture of my first thought was my best and I will not change course isn’t really working out that well for them. Has it ever?
Startups need a hypothesis, a theory that they can be tested and a way to do that (without vanity metrics). Talk to customers, modify the plan… Build something, test it, refine it, solve a problem customers are willing to pay for, turn it into a company! Right?
Being too blinded in your own superiority or bias to see that something isn’t working or that you need to alter the path to optimize for success = wantrepreneur and dead unicorn.
Investor, founder, employee, and customer value are destroyed this way and people who work for you end up without jobs… It’s time wasted on so many fronts that could have been better spent somewhere else.
Stop saying stupid shit and get back to work building something of actual value people are willing to pay you for.
Please.
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