Surfing vs. Entrepreneurship? No Difference, All In Momentum #3
“Momentum”, a concept Californian early-stage entrepreneurs do pay attention to
Having the best idea of the century is great! — but useless if it does not fit the century’s momentum.
So far, I’ve met 50 entrepreneurs and investors between LA and SF to answer the question “What’s the Californian DNA in startups?”. I first dealt with the Mindset, then on Project-Holders teams. Now comes the startup strategy. This 3rd answer focus on “Momentum”, a concept Californian entrepreneurs are paying attention to. And the process of catching it is quite similar to… surfing (LA vibes!)
At Santa Monica, I observed a lot of surfers hesitating on how to catch the big wave. Since it seems to be a common entrepreneur’s hobby, I thought it would double my chances of getting your attention. 🙄
Let me explain: Entering a market is the same process as standing on a wave for surfers.
Let’s assume the entrepreneur already identified his market, as the surfer identified the beach spot. Now, there are 3 steps:
- Identifying the right moment: the “Time-to-Market” for an entrepreneur. For the surfer, it’s identifying THE wave to catch, the wonderful opportunity. How? By looking around them 👀
- Giving the impulse: the product release. As the good wave’s coming, it’s then time to stand up on the board for surfers. How? By not missing the wave 🌊
- Surfing the wave: once successfully entered, it’s time to disrupt the market. The surfer, standing on his board, is now ready to enjoy a long and cool slide! How? By keeping the flow 🏄
Now, let’s dive deeper into the subject. Follow me!
1. Look around you 👀
When surfing, you want to identify the right moment to stand on the surfboard. Basically, you look around you to identify a strong wave.
In entrepreneurship, it’s being aware of the right moment when consumers will be receptive, when people are ready to invest in and when the competition isn’t threatening yet. At the end of each meeting here, I’m surprised by the quantity of sources entrepreneurs recommend me to read: their mind is a library! They inform themselves A LOT.
Staying tuned to the ecosystem can seem obvious. Still, a lot of entrepreneurs I met weren’t as successful as they expected because of a lack of focus (that’s my 5th article) or because of a wrong momentum!
Jacques-Alexandre Gerber, an Inovexus mentor, is now launching his B2C startup — after succeeding in B2B businesses. Since what he develops is new, Googling anything that comes to mind is part of his daily work as a CEO. To him, it doesn’t have to be specifically related to his business. It’s about the entire tech ecosystem.
When I discovered the existence of Indie Hackers, I wondered why there were so many information platforms targeting entrepreneurs. As if Linkedin, Medium, Twitter, Podcasts did not cover every possible entrepreneurship subject. Now I understand this amount of information, continuously updated, is not only valuable but vital for entrepreneurs. By the way, in the most used media by Californian entrepreneurs, there are Crunchbase (in the first place), The Verge, Business Insider, or even Re/code.
Keeping your eyes open at 360° is making sure there’s a product-market fit, anticipating future players, and analyzing how they might disrupt you.
👉 Identifying a huge wave is great, but if you swim too slow or too fast on it, you might miss the right moment to catch it.
2. Don’t miss the wave 🌊
At the Santa Monica pier, I saw a lot of surfers starting to swim on big waves. Few of them succeeded to stand on the board. Some of them made the impulse too early. And sometimes, the first ones to get up on their board were also the first ones to fall.
👉 If they had waited, the slide might have been longer.
For entrepreneurs, after assessing the right “Time-to-market” and after building a strong team of Project-Holders, the next step is releasing the product. It’s the “how”: does a good time-to-market mean entering it first?
Almost everyone I talked to in the Bay Area about momentum told me:
“Big Tech weren’t the original inventors of the the technologies that made them successful later on”
Before, Netflix, Amazon, Uber, or Apple, there was a generation 0 that failed. Jacques-Alexandre Gerber has been living in the Bay Area for 20 years. He pointed out that:
- Before Facebook, there was MySpace.
- Before Google, there was AltaVista.
- Before Apple, there was BlackBerry.
Bill Reichert, Partner at Pegasus Tech Ventures, would even say: the first-move advantage, is actually a HUGE disadvantage. Bill worked on a similar project to the iPad in the ‘90s. The momentum wasn’t right:
- The price of making it was so high that investors laughed at him.
- What he “should” have done was wait for the cost of primary resources to decrease to make economies of scale.
- And waiting for better customer acculturation.
There is a common principle in Silicon Valley: others have worked for years on solutions you’re developing. So use their ideas! It will save energy, time, motivation, and cash. It made me think of “The Social Network” in which Mark Zuckerberg is depicted as “having stolen an idea”. What if he actually was a fast-follower? What if he saw the idea and adopted it himself?
If momentum isn’t necessarily being first… what is it? It’s above all being a fast follower.
3. Keep the flow 🏄♂️
So far, our surf champion has identified the right wave, started to swim correctly, and has been able to catch it. Now it’s all about keeping control of the surfboard and surfing the wave!
Translation for entrepreneurship? After identifying the momentum and entering the market (not necessarily first), the last step is to develop your product as quickly as possible while adapting to market evolutions: act fast and execute to disrupt the market. It’s a flow: waves to control.
After the failure of generation 0, the revolutionary idea spreads in the hands of many entrepreneurs. As Angelika Blendstrup, an Inovexus mentor, said:
“The secret of success isn’t always the original idea, it’s the execution”
The value lies in the execution period: a better-identified target, a cheaper price, an easier adoption, more traction, the go-to-market strategy, and an easier ability to pivot (again, my 5th article 😉).
“Not being the first one will allow you to have more time.” Alex Deve, who founded Whitetruffle 12 years ago and has been living in SF for 23 years, told me that the more time you spend on solving problems, the more aware you are of new problems and the more efficient the solutions will be. However, you’re not looking for perfection, as Angelika indicated to me.
In Silicon Valley, I was told that:
- Steve Jobs isn’t considered a visionary — brilliant, for sure. But “the game is that ideas are stolen” (think about Xerox’s story). And Jacques-Alexandre reminded me that “History is written by the victors”: in the end, you remember the name of the one who cracked the code, not the first one who invented it.
- An efficient execution for startups is the ability to scale it. As you can guess, I will quote a Silicon Valley-based company to illustrate it: Airbnb. The scaling of their marketplace is admired by many entrepreneurs here. They managed the hardest part well: increasing both offer and supply proportionally to avoid the lack of balance that would have made their business a flop. They found the flow, not on the surfboard but in business!
In summary: timing (and luck)
There’s no playbook for becoming a successful entrepreneur. Still, a “Time-to-market” is definitely part of a success story. Keeping eyes and ears open 24/24 not to miss the wave or be too early.
Time-to-market is definitely part of a success story… if it’s not THE whole success story. Here, a lot of entrepreneurs attribute Apple or Amazon’s success 99% to the timing: it was the early days of the Internet. This timing is a concept that often leads to a question: is being a successful startup all about execution or is it luck? I’ll leave you with this philosophical reflection.😇
And for me — uh, for Inovexus — it’s also a momentum: the time to shape the future of the European early-stage landscape with smart investors by launching our fund: Inovexus Ventures! 🚀
My 5th article will deal with a situation I didn’t mention here: what if entrepreneurs miss the wave? If they weren’t enough focused on catching the wave?
See you in 2 weeks,
Mathilde
All pictures from Pixabay.
