Non-traditional project development path

Here you had a great idea and you decided that you would turn it into such a successful business that even Zuckerberg himself would ask for your autograph. What's next?

The usual scenario: you are reading the books of the powerful on how to develop a startup properly. You study clever articles about various techniques and rules of its promotion. You learn from the “enlightened” how to do this and that. Armed with smart project management systems and powerful time management rules. Attend mega-seminars, start-ups and other places of business wisdom. Well, as a result - finally, fill your project with investments, find a mentor and actively begin to develop. In short, everything is “in mind” and seems to be correct ... But it turns out that it is not so correct.

Let's first deal with the books. Their authors broadcast to us how and what to do in order to be a success. How did they know how to? The great god Startupis did not descend to them from heaven in order to reveal all these secrets. They simply brought out their personal philosophy and rules on personal experience, in real work on the project. How many books - so many different opinions, and very often come into conflict with each other. And there is no right or wrong. Each author is right in his own way, because he proved what he writes about on personal experience.
You can read a few books to get a general idea of ​​how people achieved success and just to have faith in themselves. But you should not look for any ready-made recipes, methods and rules in the books - they deprive you of your own experience and ability to think independently .

Due to the excessive following of advice from books, similar projects appear on the market and develop in a drab gray way - long, tedious and boring. However, if you study examples of bright projects and their marketing, you can easily understand that they followed their own experience and ideas, and in books they will be surely written later as the next “recipe” for those who have forgotten how to think with their heads.
In this regard, your inner world is much richer than any library. Because if you dig in it thoroughly, you can take out your own rules, methods, moves and ideas from there. So did everyone who created something more than another copy of the coupon site.
Listening to your flair and your opinion is at first unusual. You feel uncomfortable without external support in the form of books, articles and interviews with various clever people. But when you get used to it, you begin to understand that it is much more interesting to go your own way, simply the risk is higher.
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- You walk along the general trodden path - you will find and take a shop under the sun in a close crowded park.
- You go your own way - you risk making a bunch of mistakes. But sooner or later you will find not just a bench, but a gorgeous deserted beach.

With project management systems it is still more interesting - there are a lot of them becoming intimidating. I tried several. And I realized that the benefits of them are not so much as it seems. Rather the opposite. Time is spent on mastering and using such a system. It is necessary to create tasks, assign them statuses, set priorities, adjust all this, control and so on. It is much more useful to spend this time on the implementation of the tasks themselves! And it's not just about time. Using such a system, you become a robot. Put the tasks in order, set the deadlines and click on them the statuses - “Scheduled”, “In Work”, “Completed”, “Let's say amicably - you need ***” , etc. It deprives the mind of flexibility and, in a sense, dulls.

Business is not the way to Yandex.navigator from the office to your home. Rather, this is the path to the island in the vast ocean and the means at hand can only be feedback from customers and developed intuition. And everything else changes dynamically. So tasks should arise naturally and be carried out not according to the deadline, but according to circumstances. Instead of setting deadlines, it is better to use the motivation of employees - to communicate with them about their goals and plans for life, to draw parallels with the implementation of tasks and advancement to their goals. Then the tasks will be carried out as quickly as possible and without any violence on your part in the form of strict deadlines, fines, petroleum jelly and soldering iron .

With time management, respectively, everything is much simpler than described in smart books. If you have a big and grandiose dream, from which goosebumps run over the skin, then no time management is needed.
And so you wake up with the “first roosters” and work without knowing fatigue. You do not have to force yourself, because the dream motivates you.
But what and in what sequence during the day should be decided not by the advanced online planner, but by the own head and the circumstances of the current day. You need to be flexible, then you will do a lot and with pleasure, without driving yourself into a rigid framework. Moreover, you are not able to plan a day on paper so as to take into account all the circumstances. So why then try to live in artificial frameworks at all?

Now about investments. It is much better to independently bring your project to the market and get the first feedback. I give you a guarantee that you will surely change something after that. And not just change. For example, in my first project, I have changed the business model for the third time already, and in the second project, I radically changed the tariff logic.
When you find the most correct and stable course of development, only then you should think about investments. And the whole paradox is that when this happens, investors will find you. And already you will dictate to them the conditions, and not they to you.
As a result, instead of giving up about half of the company for miserable money, you will attract solid investments on really favorable terms. Plus, the initial development of the project without investment will teach you to save, competently manage every penny and look for the best ways and ways of the company’s development and advancement. You can’t learn such things from books and seminars, just by your own experience. So it is better to suffer a little at the initial stage, but to save your share, gain invaluable experience, better understand your project and even then think about investments. They may not be needed at all.

And finally, about the mentors. This is a person to whom you give a small share in the company for reasonable advice and guidance. It surprises me a little and causes bewilderment. Why would any clever uncle to advise me how and where should I develop the company? Of course, he is experienced and has achieved something. But this does not mean that he should listen and give a share. Again, it deprives you of your own experience and sense of business. And besides, you lose another big entrepreneurial joy - inner vision (the way you see your project in the future, what you are striving for). And by the way, the most successful people have always done something not because of the opinion of experts, but in spite of it.

And if to sum up, these two ways can be compared in this analogy:

Imagine you are the captain of a ship. You are free from other people's opinions and ideas, drive wherever you want, explore new shores and get real pleasure from it all. This is an interesting adventure for you, something like a treasure hunt, and you decide where you want to go. This is the path I wrote about.

In the traditional way, you, it seems, are also the captain of the ship, but before you touch the helm, you collect all your mentors and investors in the cabin and ask them for permission. And instead of the beautiful ocean, you have to swim in a public pool, because it’s safer. And we must not forget to wear a swimming cap. So it is accepted (not by you of course).

I do not argue that the classic way also gives good practical results. But having surrounded himself from all sides with mentors, other people's money, other people's thoughts, other people's advice from books, management systems, control and other external attributes, there is a risk to lose the pleasure from the process itself and to miss out on its own unique experience in the process of creating a company.

By the way, what path did you choose?