I recently did a couple of speeches for founders. One was in front of 1400 people at the Bits and Pretzels event in Munich. I’ve found that one of the keynotes that gets the most attention is my take on the entrepreneurial roller coaster.
With the massive startup advice that is dished out to founders there are two misconceptions.
The first misconception is that you can build startups in days, weekends or weeks. Or that you can fail really fast and do the next thing. And sometimes that next thing is to talk about your failure. In my experience this is not a road to success, but folklore. Good things do need time, although you can sometimes abbreviate with too much money.
The second misconception is the idea that if you have the right company, there is a hockey stick to your growth, if you have just the right concept. Again: If you look behind the scenes and if you have the time to read the accounts of famous companies like twitter or facebook you find that all these people struggled at several points. Success does not look like one big hockey stick. But like many trials and errors, ups and downs. That is the roller coaster.
If you know it’s going to be a roller coaster, you are less likely to give up too early. If you know it takes a long time, you will give yourself more opportunities to iterate.
