Be You

Startups take on the identity of their founders.

Through various events and circumstances, their identity is forged. I've found it incredibly interesting how circumstances can so quickly modify the identity of your company. If you are pitching the VCs for the cash (because, you need cash or otherwise you wouldn't waste time pitching the VC) your company is a massive homerun that you can sell in than 18 months. If you are prospecting with the F500, you're positioning is entirely different - you're an established company with a multitude of client references, on a completely secure enterprise class, blah, blah blah, that's going to increase revenues by 10% in it's first year of deployment. Oh, and you'll be around forever.

But... if you take a good hard look at your product/service and where you fit the market - it's likely that you are something entirely different from either of those things. And taking it a step deeper, if you examine the strengths of your founding team (maybe it's just you... so there is an "I" in team) you may find that you're living in an alternate universe, trying to shoe-horn yourself into a place where you don't fit. You know, the whole square peg dodecahedron hole syndrome. (I've rarely found a startup where the hole was round.)

Maybe this is because I've just recently read Now Discover Your Strengths (I know, I know, I'm late with this book) but there's just something about your innate talents and abilities that drives you to do certain things better than other things, and therefore would evidently cause you to be more successful in endeavors that better aligned with those talents. An interesting corollary exists between your personality, your talents, and your product/market fit.

Not that I'm completely sold on the whole strengths pathway as I believe various talents and capabilities can rise to the occasion depending on your circumstances, and that many times this has a huge impact on a startup. We've all seen superhuman efforts come from unlikely sources - like Seabiscuit. So it seems to me that a startup need not focus on consistent near perfect performances (like larger companies do). Maybe startups are like horse racing. You don't need persistent near perfect performances all year long. You really just want to blow them away at three different races and win the Triple Crown. I feel like some of us in the vast middle earth of entrepreneurs fare better with the sporadic superhuman efforts rather than consistently near perfect performances...

The point is this: if you're the rabbit or the turtle, either way, let your strengths and dreams drive your efforts toward the ideal product/market fit. Don't let the world tell you who to be - be who you want to be. The world is not a pie that is slowly running out of slices; new pies are made every single day by people like you, living their dreams and strengths... and changing the world. There is a place that exists where you are living your strengths and it is yielding the maximum benefit to you and society. That's the place you need to be - and, just so you know, that's the place where product/market fit is at maximum. It might not be comfy (probably won't) and more likely will really suck for a while... just deal with it. Let the experience move you farther along. And be you - because you is who you need to be to impact the world like you are intended to.