Disillusion of start ups

Photo got from here

 

Facebook, Instagram, and a huge number of start up companies that became successful almost overnight.  Most of their stories were featured all around the internet for others to see their success stories.  These stories are great since they are motivators for other people and hopefully they can create their own success stories in the future.

What I find weird is that most people who read these stories have a twisted sense of what things should be.  It doesn’t mean that Mark Zuckerberg drop out of school and focused on facebook, anyone can just drop out of school and focus on whatever start up idea they have.  I have met a number of individual who thought that they had the best idea and from there, they resigned from their work and just focus on creating their start ups.

What most of these individuals lack is the realization that resigning and focusing on start up idea, will never guarantee success.  They will argue that the likes of Steve Jobs and the founders of OMGPop a midst having to face hardship ended up surviving the tech world and are successful on their own terms.

These individuals tend to be so myopic on their idea and the potential of success from their idea that they became blinded by the truth.  Most companies who made it out there were not even the first to launch or introduce certain products.  What they did was to innovate ideas that were out there.  It is inevitable for people to want to introduce new ideas because it gives pleasure to them to be recognized as the creator.  Some would go the mile to even steal ideas just to get the fame associated with the idea.

I don’t blame the media for this, but these individual should not look at the news on face value.  Obviously the media would like to write on success stories.  These individuals should try to dig deeper and learn that in every successful tech start up that got funded, there are thousands and even millions of other tech start ups that ended badly.  They had an idea, resigned from their work to focus on their idea but still they were struggling.  These are unknown to a lot since they only look at the potential of things.  They tend to over use the word positive thinking where in fact, they should be more realistic.

What most of these individuals who only strive to look at the success of the tech world tend to dismiss the fact that in any business, there are fundamentals.  They have this superman mentality that they can survive the world on their own and are drowned in the illusion that they are the next messiah of the technology world.  Why would they want to do their start up when they know the chances of them failing are high? If and if they do have the business skills to assess the situation.  Doesn’t it makes sense that on all avenues, you want to minimize risk on your start up?

Here are my assessments not to say that I know everything.

1. Be open to learn from anyone and everyone.  Do not be the smartest person in the room.  Arrogance will be their downfall.  Every person you meet will be a possible help in achieving your business.
2. Create a strategy or a plan of attack on how to achieve it.  Put aside the Ready Fire Aim mentality and create plans in case it didn’t go well.  Wars are highly correlated in business and no army has ever won a battle without a solid plan.  If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
3. Learn from past mistakes.  Not just your own but others as well.  Try to look beyond the idea and try to understand how others did it.  Study the psychology of their actions and strategies.  Look not just on the success of other, but also on the failure that others went through.  Their learning can also be your learning that will cut through your process on achieving your goal.