When does experience help?
Airbnb, google, twitter, yahoo and Microsoft have all disrupted the industries they operated in (some of them: the whole world), and all of them were run by first time, completely inexperienced entrepreneurs. And yet, investors tend to favor “experienced” entrepreneurs. Even entrepreneurs themselves try to surround themselves with “experienced” people to help them succeed. Who is right?
Liron Petrushka, one of the most successful Israeli investors recently wrote about what he looks for in startup founders before investing (in fact, he said all he needs is one short meeting to know if the company will be successful): Are the founders willing to listen?
What’s the worst that can happen?
Ask a successful CEO what is their 5 best decisions. Now ask them about their 5 worst decisions.
Most CEOs will tell you: it’s not easy to immediately remember the successes they are most proud of, but they can instantly recall a very long list of huge mistakes that they’ve made.
In the business world, mistakes are an integral part. In Hebrew we have a saying: “Only the person who does not do anything does not make mistakes”. And it’s not that mistakes are not painful: the CEOs that will quickly recall the mistakes will also tell you how painful each of them was. They will remember where they were and how they felt when they realized the decision was a mistake. They are like scars on the skin.
What to do when you are out of moves
When should you decide it's time to give up? The motivational posters say to "never give up" or "never say never" or some clever statement like that. But that's just silly (like many other aspects of the motivational posters).
Others give certain metrics: When your cashflow shows a negative future balance, or when you are out of money in the bank, or when your plan fails. They are all right to a certain extent, but not always.
In fact, this is a canonical question in the startup world. It's an important question that makes the difference between a huge success, a small success, a failure and a huge failure. There are many stories about startup failures and successes that touch on the subject of what to do when it's clear your startup is about to die; the moral of the different stories are different, and the bottom line is it's a gamble. There are just no clear rules.
Insights into Israeli-concept of creativity, risk-taking at global startup competition
KOISRA Seed Partners as judge at Thursday's demo day and global startup competition; more insights into the Israeli-concept of creativity, growth, and risk-taking
We arrived at the 2014 Columbus Global Camp just as the event's Master of Ceremonies took to the podium and prepared to begin the day's proceedings. We were there partly in the capacity of judges and partly on one of our reconnaissance missions to find another great Korean startup among the dozen startups selected as finalists that afternoon.
How to do everything right
Many startups are obsessed with the idea of doing "everything right". Reading corporate history for companies like Apple, Amazon and Microsoft just fuels this need even further.
We read about the perfectionist Steve Jobs, who wanted packaging to be as good as the product himself; how he obsessed about the physical appearance of the Apple computer and forced the engineers to find ways to implement what they thought was impossible and what he thought was necessary; no compromises were made and he came out with the perfect product.
What is the best that can happen?
When I just started my company, I remember thinking: "If I can just bring the company to the point where we make a $1,000 a month, I'll be happy. Revenues are most important for a boot-strapped company and once stable revenues start coming in, I'll know exactly what to do next." A thousand dollars seemed like a dream.
