What Miley Cyrus can teach you about starting a great company
“Stay hungry, stay foolish” isn’t the only sound of advice for startups
Starting a company is hard. Most incoming and aspiring entrepreneurs wish they could get advice from startup pioneers but the truth is: wisdom often comes from unlikely sources. Enter Miley Cyrus, a singer who has masterfully transformed herself and let the media and general public do the marketing for her. Below are three gems of wisdom on how to build a great company from her song “We can’t stop”
1. “This is our house
This is our rules”Your house is built on your vision and only you can bring that vision to life. Therefore, you must play by your own rules no matter how unconventional they may seem.
This is our house… This is our rules
Starting a company that people love is an extraordinary feat. Creating value for a non-trivial number of people requires a sensitive blend of ingenuity, resilience, good timing, and serendipity. Yet, what you should keep in mind is that a great startup usually takes something that didn’t exist and scales it to millions of people. Since this thing you are building doesn’t exist, it is very likely that nobody knows for certain how to execute your idea to bring it to life. Miley’s advice is extremely important: your house is built on your vision and only you can bring that vision to life. Therefor, you must play by your own rules no matter how unconventional they may seem. As Jack Dorsey elegantly put it: it’s good to learn from the past but don’t let the past dictate your execution in the future. Make you own rules because it’s your house and your vision.
2. “We run things
Things don’t run we”Every human on earth is subject to external forces. Your job as a founder is to rise above such circumstances.
We run things… things don’t run we
The startup journey is fraught with obstacles, many of which are out of your control. That being said, every human on earth is subject to external forces. Your job as a founder is to rise above such circumstances. When obstacles come between you and your vision, don’t just play the victim and pat yourself on the back for trying. Instead, think about how you can be part of the solution. Listen to Miley: you can influence the world as much as the world influences you.
3. “We don’t take nothing from nobody”
As a founder you will get loads of unsolicited advice and it is your job to figure out which advice to take and which to ignore.
This is obvious, you shouldn’t let others demoralize you on this difficult journey. However, I wanted to look at this verse in a different way. Since there’s a bunch of double negatives, I’ll do my best to apply what’s left of my logic training to de-convolute the sentence to: “We don’t take anything from everybody.” This is a critical observation from Miley: as a founder you will get loads of unsolicited advice and it is your job to figure out which advice to take and which to ignore.One way to sift through all the opinions is two use Miley’s two previously-mentioned words of wisdom to critically evaluate opinions.
Now go on, replay that Miley a cappella video. You know you want to!
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