Top Four Lessons from Bill Gross
Insights from the most successful unicorn founder of all time
Bill Gross, Founder and CEO of Idealab has built 150 companies, seven of which have had billion-dollar plus exits. This makes him by far the most successful unicorn founder of all time and a useful source of hard-won lessons on building startups. Fortunately, Bill is also Founder and CEO of Heliogen, a Prime Movers Lab portfolio company and he graciously shared his top startup lessons at our annual meeting last week. Here are the top four for you.
1. Timing
You may be ridiculed for having a great idea ahead of it’s time. All truth passes through 3 stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. Don’t be afraid to start a company again later if the timing has changed and become right even though it wasn’t right the first time! Bill has done this multiple times.
2. Iterate
You never get it perfect rough out of the gate. It’s not a little about product-market fit. It’s all about product-market fit. You win on iteration, by getting the most learning per unit time.
3. Use Moore’s Law
Exponential curves crush linear. Nothing has ever gone down as much in price or as fast as the cost of computing power. Businesses that smartly harness this effect win. All commodities fluctuate in price, only computation always goes down.
4. Persistence
Creating anything great requires an emotional journey. First, this is the best idea ever. Second, this will be fun. Third, this is harder than I thought. Fourth, this is going to be a lot of work. Fifth, This sucks, I have no idea what I am doing. Now you know you are in the dark swamp of despair — which must be crossed to reach success. Persistence is the key to crossing it. On the other side you get back to sixth: it’s okay, but still sucks. Seventh, let’s call it a day and say we learned something. Eighth, hm… Ninth, wow!!! Tenth, winning.
Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in seed-stage companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation and computing.
