Bet on the Horse, not the Race
I heard this saying from Jason recently on This Week in Startups and it really stuck. When investing in someone or something, where is the true value? I believe it’s in the person, more so then the product. Am I saying it’s people first, and idea second? No, I’m not. What I’m really saying is, it’s the human being that will eventually win the race.
It may not be the race you thought they were going to win, but they will win, if they have hustle and gumption. A true entrepreneur will never give up, they can’t give up, even if they tried. Entrepreneurs are wired a certain way, whether they like it or not.
Ideas are cheap, and smart people have a lot of them, but how many smart people are there? You might think there’s a lot of them, of course your one of them, right? Well, you may be right, but by smart people, I really mean smart entrepreneurs.
Smart entrepreneurs learn from their mistakes, they learn continuously, they take what they’ve learned and apply it to the next venture. In my mind, this can only lead to eventual success. If you’re looking for oil and dig every day, whether months or years, you will eventually strike oil, or at least you hope to.
You need to keep your eye on the prize. I believe you need to do something you’re both passionate and knowledgeable about. I’m not saying you should be an expert, but you should have some domain knowledge, and it would help a ton, if you’d use your own product.
Choose your battles wisely, and love what you do. Think twice before going all in on an idea, but don’t wait forever. You can pivot, iterate, all that shit, just remember that building a product is one thing and building a business is another.
