I’ve been thinking and writing a lot lately on the economy and how it is affecting startups. This is always on my mind. I’ve been pretty positive and bullish on how I think things will turn out. Last week, I attended the Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference, and was blown away by one presentation in particular. First off, the entire conference was great, but the best part by far was Gary Vaynerchuk. He is my new hero!!!
Here’s a link to a video of the presentation.
http://www.vimeo.com/groups/azec/videos/2293651
I haven’t watched it yet, so I don’t know how good the quality is, but I’m sure you’ll get the point. He is full of passion, humor, insight, knowledge, and just tells it like it is. It is rare that I am this affected by a speaker.
So this brings me to my point, though I may ramble and wander a bit in this post. There is never a good or bad time to launch a startup. The odds always suck, they are never in your favor. This was a point Gary made several times. If you have a great idea and great people, you have a good chance to be successful. If you don’t, you don’t!! It’s obvious and common sense, but you just don’t hear enough people say this.
As a Startup founder, I get a lot of advice and feedback. This is a good thing, and I welcome it all. However, if one more person tells me that I need traction to get funding, or that 80% or more of all startups fail, I’m gonna snap!! I think people must confuse humility and willingness to listen to all feedback as naivety or inexperience. I’m not sure, but I’m getting close to my boiling point. Look, I COMPLETELY understand the risks of a startup. 80-90% fail, of the companies who submit a business plan to an investor, only 1 in a 100 (or less) even get their plan read by a partner. The economy sucks now. It is hard to get funded before you have customers and revenue. YES, I get it. I knew this before I started. I knew this before I left my job of 8 years. I knew this before the economy went to shit. Maybe only 1 in 10 succeed. Maybe only 1 in 1,000 get funded w/o revenue and a fully launched product. But, the thing that is going to make me successful is that I fully believe I am that one! How can you succeed if you don’t believe that and work your ass off to make it happen?
So please, give me advice. Tell me what you don’t like about the business model. Be direct, I can take it. But don’t start quoting statistics and telling me how risky this is. If I hadn’t fully processed that information and done my risk analysis/contingency planning before starting my business, I’m an idiot and it won’t do any good anyway.
