Built for War: Surviving Tough Times
It’s ugly right now, in fact still very ugly in Silicon Valley. It’s always been hard in startup land, at least the reality of it in my 25+ years here. But somewhere along the lines in 2019-2021, investors and founders kind of forgot this or just chose to ignore this reality. Reality bites back hard though. I keep this in mind when I read, and came across this description of Louis XVI who was the King toppled during the French Revolution in Jay Winik’s “The Great Upheaval”.
“In times of war, rebellion, or crisis, leaders must sometimes be cruel or cold; he was neither. In times of war, rebellion, or crisis; leaders must sometimes be able to hate; he was not much of a hater either. In times of war, rebellion, or crisis, to some extent or another, most leaders must be fanatics: stubborn, steel-willed, driven, secretive yet able to inspire, fastidious, and zealous.
They must be prepared to act alone, without encouragement, relying on their own inner resolve. And they must be indifferent to approval, reputation, and even love, cherishing only their own personal sense of honor or vision, which they allow no one else to judge.”
The quote seems incredibly apt. It’s psychologically wartime and it requires another level of intensity, endurance and work ethic. You have to be decisive in executing your vision regardless of the noise.
Being an entrepreneur, especially one going down the venture capital funding route is the hardest and longest path to the top of the mountain. Its high risk, but also high gain to its extreme, with tremendous failure rates. It is also a path to immense wealth if you do it right and with a little bit of grit, luck and timing too.
It’s incredibly hard to get to product market fit. But then it’s another kind of hard to scale your company once you start to grow like crazy. You have heard of the rule 3X, when everything breaks when you triple in size and revenue, and this sometimes happens several years in a row. Its levels on top of levels on top of levels of difficulty. Thus it requires a certain type of founder.
So new startup founders out there, please make sure you understand the expectations and what going down the venture scale path entails. It’s not everyone and that’s okay. So many kinds of businesses out there to build, just make sure it’s the right one for you.