Take a moment

The other day at a Founders Round Table event I was approached by an aspiring startup entrepreneur.

We exchanged some tidbits about his business. And I gave him some advise about not worrying too much about burning out his servers from too much traffic and not having capital to scale with it.  That problem takes care of itself-- as an investor I wish all the startups I invested in and see everyday had that problem!

The entrepreneur then told me a story about two lumberjack brothers. 

 

The brothers were out one day chopping down trees, and to spice things up made a small wager between themselves on who could chop down a similarly sized tree faster.

So they got to chopping.  After 5 minutes, the second brother took a brief break, and stepped away from chopping and went into a woodshed.  The first brother continued chopping.  Then second brother came back and began chopping again.  Then another 5 minutes later the second brother did it again. 

The first brother was about half way through his tree when the second brother felled his tree.

The first brother was amazed.  He asked the second brother how he did it.  The second brother responded: "When I took those breaks, I was sharpening my ax as well as getting some rest to hit the tree harder."

 

After 15 years as an entrepreneur and VC I am still making this simple mistake.  As I look back on the companies that really crushed it vs the companies that simply did "ok", it's the ones that thought about how to have an exponential impact on their business.  Coming in and working hard is an element to success, and often will set you up for the big breakout effort; but too often we mistake pure perspiration for success. That's how the "David" startups beat their "Goliath" incumbent competitors; you have to do the same.  You don't want to play on the same field as your competitive set.

 

Here's one other take away.  In the tale above, there were no group dynamics--there was only one brother who changed course and he could decide for himself what to do and then execute; changing how your whole group works and rethinking your business, as a group, is a lot harder.  It requires courage to challenge the conventional wisdom, trust, intelligence and experience; it's even hard to put away all the egos for a moment, including your own.  

 

One route to take is to do an off-site meeting; this is often the way to get a conversation started.  Doing so periodically, regardless of whether you see the need, is often a good idea to tap into everyones perspective, including your investors and management team and staff.   Everyone has to buy in to make it work. It's risky to bare your soul, or admit that perhaps you can do some things better, and that you don't have all the answers.  It could get you fired, or your friends fired or make you realize that you've wasted millions or years of effort.  As a group, during this meeting, I strongly suggest that you constructively focus on problems and potential strategic and tactical solutions versus personal blame.  If you fail, no one, including yourself, will care or remember 5 or 10 years from now the "who" of the issue if you don't nail and focus exclusively for purposes of this meeting on the "how".

 

From my own 15 year experience as an entrepreneur and as an investor, if things aren't moving fast enough, or you've experienced some setbacks, and regardless of if you want to do an off-site, it's better to bite the bullet *now* and make some changes to speed up execution (linearly or exponentially) versus waiting.  The alternative is to fail and muse about what could have been years from now, if you had only taken a moment to sharpen that blade.