“Note to self: don't change for anyone / Note to self: don't die / Note to self: don't change for anyone / Don't change, just lie” - Ryan Adams
If Woody Allen is right that 80% of life is just showing up,
then the bulk of an entrepreneur’s job is keeping the company alive long enough
to succeed. That in turn means constantly scanning the horizon for what is most
likely to kill you next.
It turns out, this is how NASA trains their astronauts to
stay alive in the unforgiving environment of space. The singing astronaut Chris
Hadfield gave an interview where he described this approach:
In the startup world, death comes most quickly through failing to grow rapidly. That means the two most critical tasks are keeping current customers happy and getting new ones. Growth is the bait that attracts capital and capital is oxygen for a startup.“Half of the risk of a six-month flight is in the first nine minutes, so as a crew, how do you stay focused? How do you not get paralyzed by the fear of it? The way we do it is to break down: What are the risks? And a nice way to keep reminding yourself is: What's the next thing that's going to kill me?”
Once a startup company is funded, there is an immediate
desire to draw a huge sigh of relief and think about how to fix everything that
is wrong with the product, starting with a ground up redesign. However,
startups are fragile creatures. Customers pay for solutions - for them, elegance
is secondary.
A company can easily die while it is “fixing” its product. A
better approach is to prioritize resources guarantee growth and approach
product redesign in a modular fashion that still enables a steady stream of
customer-facing enhancements.
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