Side Hustlers, Students, STARTERS as a bridge to All-Stars, Experts, & SCALERS
ReThinkingStartups.com / CoFounderator.com
#DiscussAndDebate Topic#037
What if one of the reasons that ~99% fail is simply this:
A. What if those with the time, interest, passion, and hustle to START (potentially-)great businesses are just not (often) the ones with the experience/expertise to build/scale it into a great company?
B. Conversely, what if (many of?) those with the skill/talent, experience/expertise to build/scale great companies will simply no longer possess the time, interest, passion to do the hustling/grinding, a-b-z-testing & trial/error-tinkering to create the (potentially-)great products/services/software/whatever…
C. And, what if, entrepreneurial ecosystems that depend upon successful startups coming from the very few…
We asked 34 students to give an honest self-assessment in 16 areas (ranging from overall intelligence to creativity, from work ethic to leadership), with instructions of:
Compared to your peers (the other students at this event), how do YOU feel that YOU compare to THEM?
Don’t over-think it. Just answer HONESTLY. We ALL have Strengths AND Weaknesses!
I’ll come back to this column when I have more time to elaborate more on what the point was, what the results might imply, and why we think #SelfAwareness is so important — particularly for entrepreneurs!
[Editor’s Note: Who are you kidding?? — you have 237 columns just like this one that you’ve been planning to come back and edit or finish for years! And, weren’t you planning…
Entrepreneur/Startup STRUGGLES & FAILURES (~99%?) tend to be quiet/private — shared with a very small circle of close confidants (5? 10? 20?)
So (of course!) there is an incredibly skewed perception of just how many entrepreneurs and startups are struggling and failing (~99%?) compared to the success stories (~1%?)…
While you might hear (or speculate) the reasons for failure by any 1, 2, or 5 individual entrepreneurs/startups, the reality is that, on a macro-level, almost NOBODY is hearing the real/full stories of a large enough percentage of the failures to be able to extrapolate anything even close to enough statistically relevant data to look for patterns and trends (among the ~99% failures) without just guessing at causation vs. …
It’s also a “Happy-Horsesh*t Hindsight” sentiment (unless you have a Time Machine)
Yes, of course we all like to SAY:
“I learned more from my failures than I did from my successes”
“It’s not about how many times you get knocked down, it’s how many times you get back up”
“Live and learn… Nobody said it would be easy… It’s always darkest before the dawn… [blah blah blah]”
But, let’s be honest…
*IF* we were given a time machine, wouldn’t the vast majority of us simply choose to learn all those same lessons, but WITHOUT the Stress/Struggles & Mistakes/Miscues… WITHOUT the loss of so much valuable Time/Money (and Sleep/Sanity)… and WITHOUT all the soul-crushing Knockdowns, Breakdowns, Hardships, and eventual Failure…???
[Editor’s Note: The greater…
ABSURD (Absurdly Accurate?) ANALOGY — Re: Experienced Entrepreneurs Who Just Watch as 1st-Time Entrepreneurs Fail at the Same Rates & For the Same Reasons We’ve Seen Over & Over for Years!
First Half of Analogy:
“Oh, no! You got hit by a car?!?
Was it perhaps a silver 2015 BMW X3…?
…that ran a red light at the corner of Piedmont and Peachtree…??
…on a Tuesday, around 9:07am…???”
— Wow! Yes, that’s exactly right! How did you know that?!?
“ LOL… No surprise there — we’ve been seeing that exact same thing happen just like that for years!! It’s a shame nobody tried to warn you.
Oh well. Sorry to hear it happened to you too. Good luck with those broken legs!”
— WTF?!
— VS. —
Second Half of Analogy:
“Oh, no! You’re…
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AGENDA: 1) Strategic Premises/Philosophies of PROGRAM; 2) Viral Premises for 64+ PRODUCTS; 3) Questions/Discussion; 4) Form…
Back in the ~1700’s, the average life expectancy was ~35 (horrific by today’s standards!), but it wasn’t really seen as “a problem” because that’s “just the way it [was]” so most people couldn’t even fathom a world where we routinely live to be 80, 90, or 100+.
Now, let’s talk about today’s horrific ~99% failure rate for startups — that we somehow accept as “just the way it is”?!?! NOTE: It’s difficult to solve problems if we don’t acknowledge there are problem to be solved!
AT THE TIME — without the benefit of hindsight — was anyone back then thinking…
Prepare to have your mind blown in 3… 2… 1…
A. DID YOU KNOW…
Enterprise owns both National and Alamo… ??
Avis owns Budget, Payless, and Zipcar… ??
Hertz owns Dollar and Thrifty… ??
If you’ve ever been in the room with founders working on Financial Projections, you might have observed something like this:
>> Co-Founder A: “Ok, let’s go with a sales growth rate of 10% in Year 1, 20% in Year 2, and 30% in Year 3…”
>> Co-Founder B: “Ok… [*enters numbers in Excel*]… Dude, that‘s not gonna get us anywhere close to the $2.5 Million Valuation we’re looking for.”
>> Co-Founder A: “Shit. Ok, well… what if we double the price of this and this, cut this expense in half, change those two from monthly expenses to annual, and…
Many Founders spend A TON OF TIME trying to get funding.
In MANY cases, that funding is needed to hire employees.
I believe that SOME “entrepreneurial employees” out there would actually be interested in that equity (rather than just the dollars that the Founder is attempting to sell the equity to obtain)…
Instead of struggling to find X dollars in funding (to use as salary to pay employees), why not entice employees by letting them work for that equity, the same way they would work for the dollars that you’re trying so hard to find? Equity-Earning Employee-Entrepreneurs? #AlliterationAddiction
I’m not…
STARTUP WHATEVER!
Startup *S.H.I.T. to Share! *Strategies/Hypotheses/Insights/Theories (to discuss/debate/demonstrate)
