Catch A Wave and You’re Sitting On Top of the World
The surfer (gal or guy), their board and a wave. It’s iconic imagery from California culture. But it’s more than that.
Surfing is the perfect metaphor for entrepreneurism. It’s about Risk. It’s about Grit. It’s about Uncertain Outcomes. It’s about swallowing your Fear. It’s about taking that Next Step whether you’re facing a solid wall of water or a solid wall of Rejection.
You don’t have to be from California in order to possess those winning traits and to succeed as an Entrepreneur. You just need to be prepared to ride the biggest wave of your life. And that is no small task.
Fortunately, the primary characteristics necessary for success as an entrepreneur are not geographically delineated. They are instead universally recognized, shared by all who make up the lists of our most successful Founders and who hail from whatever part of the world they inhabit.
Back Story
It was a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who first floated the surfing analogy. As told in the book, The Upstarts, by author Brad Stone, it was during a Startup School event produced by Y Combinator that Greg McAdoo, from the august VC firm Sequoia Capital, spoke about why being a great entrepreneur required the precision of a great surfer.
“If you want to build a truly great company you have got to ride a really big wave. And you’ve got to be able to look at a market waves and technology waves in a different way than other folks and see it happening sooner, know how to position yourself out there, prepare yourself, pick the right surfboard — in other words, bring the right management team in, build the right platform underneath you. Only then can you ride a truly great wave. At the end of the day, without that great wave, even if you are a great entrepreneur, you are not going to build a really great business.”
The Good News
You don’t have to be located in Silicon Valley to access that curious blend of attitude, culture and awareness. There are benefits however to keeping your dial tuned to the SV frequency. As the original founding spot of Innovation, as expressed through startups and the funding of same via venture capitalists, there are defining and frontier-crushing attributes that it pays to emulate. You are in a unique position to take the best parts of the proven SV model and adapt them to your own situations. Whether you’re sitting in Columbus, Omaha or Fargo, the mighty Midwest has just as much chance to produce the next Evan Williams who grew up in a farming family in remote Nebraska.
How to Catch A Wave
Be open to new networks. Being open to considering people, ideas and things you may not be familiar with is actually at the heart of entrepreneurial thinking and development, the beginning of global reach that you don’t get with insular thinking and strategies. It’s arguably one of the first steps in breaking down barriers. Access to cutting-edge innovation thought and awareness has been another of those barriers that have existed for far too long in the Midwest.
But as these diverse cultures begin to meet each other, those who go beyond their comfort zones will be the first to reap the benefits. No one can define exactly how new networks will lead to something greater. That’s their mystery. But we do know that there is greater power and opportunity in building bridges to new channels than what we can achieve through isolated frameworks.
You may have to work a little harder to tap into that SV frequency, to immerse yourself in the granddaddy culture, as local nascent innovation communities traverse their own learning curve, and may or may not give you great access to authentic entrepreneurial thinking. It’s up to you to do the work that will get you there. But then that is one of the hallmarks of being a successful entrepreneur.
And that’s the spirit of Catching A Wave!
