growvc

Throughout the turmoil of building, exploring and setting up an early stage, high growth venture, it’s easy to get lured into seeing an easy way out, a magic fix to all your problems. Whether it’s the guy next to you or the startup your read up on your favorite blog, you might start looking at them trying to figure out what they know, that you don’t.

Everything Looks Prettier from the Outside

Photo credit: Images_of_Money

Perspective is a hard quality to master, particularly on your first ride on the startup roller coaster. Have you ever noticed how people seem to congratulate you on all the progress you’ve made, the vast accomplishments and what not, yet you as the entrepreneur still inevitably feel like everything’s a mess and you still have about seventy two things to tend to, right now? It’s easy to forget what people see from the outside looking in, how they are watching from the sidelines and only observe different points in time, rather than the full story. It’s definitely not what you see behind the curtains.

Every market is built on a variety of different trends, audiences, technology advances etc, but markets are also inter-connected and affect one another often greatly. As the entrepreneur churns away at ‘all their problems’, there may be larger things in play that work in the entrepreneurs favor, that may not seem as apparent in the daily turmoil. However, they may be those things that set the stage for the daily turmoil to ever have a place and time.

Raising $15M will Solve All Your Problems

Entrepreneurs tend to think that at the early stages, the reason for their problems is the lack of capital. Sure, I’m not going to say that’s not partly true and managing capital is definitely a key part of your role as a founder. However, if you don’t know the direction you’re going, pouring $15M on an entrepreneur won’t give him any better sense of direction. Yet, the consequences and implications of experimentation at that point are a lot more dire.

Don’t for a second assume that it gets easier when you take someone else’s money. You’re essentially then placed with the job of multiplying those dollars for that person or partner – which is fantastic if you can do and less so if you can’t, yet either way it’s not going to be a walk on rose pedals.

There are countless of variations of stories about working with investors of all sorts, where the entrepreneur buys out the investor or leaves the relationship in any way they can. Then there are those stories where the entrepreneur gets or feels stuck. Like any partnership in your valuable company, getting in a high stakes relationship without a solid foundation and reason, can ultimately be futile and unnecessary. Think about it for a second, how would you act if you gave someone $15M of your own money? Or less even, one million? Would you let them run around and pansy at parties and enjoy life? I know I wouldn’t.

Silver Lining

More than anything else, you have to be realistic and evaluate the environment with the most honest and objective looking glass. It’s easier said than done, but one of the important things to keep in mind, is that there’s no magic fixes that make everything work. But that should be good news, because if there’s no magic trick for you, there’s also no magic trick for anyone else.

Join Grow Venture Community

Register Now! or Join to build our venture!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2012 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Entrepreneur Inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.