Startup Cemeteries are full of visionaries without experience and knowledge.
Often, when I attend conferences or networking events, I wonder how many people work on the periphery of the tech industry. Social networking gurus, SEO ninjas, bloggers and more. This is a party of promoters of the technical community.
“Cut your way to success”, “meet the right people”, “become a business superstar”. They found their silver bullet. They can boast of passive income from the web business, all the time traveling around the world, while the rest of the mortals work in their workplaces 9 hours 5 days a week.
In a world where we are looking for silver bullets, these people seem to have gathered an arsenal of them. Moreover, they found an audience that is ready to massively buy their “silver bullets”.
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The most graphic examples of this are some of the followers of the ideas of the book “How to work 4 hours a week and not hang around in the office from call to call, live anywhere and be rich” by Timothy Ferriss (The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss ). The negative point is not in the book itself. Ferris does describe some interesting resource management tips to get the most out of your work. However, undesirable, in my opinion, is the hacker mentality for success, generated by him in business circles (hack-your-way-to-success mentality).
This thinking is contrary to all that I know about entrepreneurship. This is the way of thinking that I see when people say that they have a great idea and they want to give the development to the young college student who knows how to code, or outsource their work to regions with low labor costs. This is a thinking that suggests that entrepreneurship is a series of activities to create and strengthen business connections and fundraising meetings, and even allow for the existence of some silver bullet business connections that will replace a real sales strategy. This leads to a passive approach in a very complicated matter.
What is missing in all this is an installation on skill; the fact that the main driver of success is actually experience and a focused focus on the development of skills in their profession / craft, and not some risky series of “hacks”.
What is happening on the periphery - be it the cheeky jokes that we see on Twitter from IT celebrities, or the headlines in TechCrunch, in fact, do not make sense as a basis for a business or a profession. As well as the number of meetings or network events you have scheduled. At best, these things are tertiary, and at worst, simply distracting factors.
Success in a career requires application and accumulation of experience. This implies that for any company you either provide expertise, or you are a passive observer. Masters in their field are drivers. The added value is created by their experience gained from the inquisitiveness of the mind, and a serious attitude towards their craft.
Starting a business is by its nature an intensive course in recruiting experience and expertise. The uniqueness of startups is the lack of resources. Lack of resources forces the founders to quickly adapt their skills to meet any project needs.
“I didn’t know how to do it, so I just needed to understand it,” is what I regularly hear from successful founders, whereas “I couldn’t find someone to make X, so I had to think whether to continue at all ” is common for the founders of unsuccessful startups.
If you accept this challenge, you will understand that a startup is nothing more than a “simulator”. In fact, this is an excellent teacher precisely because of the need for the rapid accumulation of knowledge to run in a short time to survive a business.
For example, a founder with technical knowledge and experience sufficient to work in a large company must adapt and gain more experience in related technical areas, since human resources are not enough to simply transfer these tasks to another specialist.
This is also true for solving problems in other non-technical areas, be it sales, finance, marketing, management or design. For a successful launch should be interested in this activity. There will be no one to fill these roles at an early stage.
In the study of these previously unknown “territories” for them, the founders are faced with the headwind of starting a business, and it becomes clear that a startup is only about professional growth and character development. With any level of actual success of a venture project, subject to the whims of external forces, this growth is an intangible dividend that makes this experience invaluable.
That is why the idea of ​​a passive 4-hour week will self-destruct. Relaxing on the beach or traveling the world instead of actively participating in creating an arsenal of your own knowledge and skills is professional negligence.
Moreover, it is not associated with practical applicability. No serious company was created passively. Passive thinking makes people think, “I have a great idea. I will hire a team to implement it ”or“ I have an acquaintance who will move sales up while I play in a visionary chair. ” Start-up cemeteries are full of visionaries with no expertise or proper skills to implement ideas, because they are not executed by themselves, but are realized thanks to the intense influence of skilled personnel.
The most important thing is that by thinking of business as a series of hacks and transactional relationships, you will never gather experience with which your future “me” and future business will succeed. Of course, the expertise of the founders alone may not be enough. However, this is what allows you to deal with the difficulties in creating a business. You do not just work on the idea, you get the knowledge that will help you succeed in the following projects.
It is the experience and skill that allow someone like Elon Musk to move from project to project and from sector to sector, having knowledge of how to solve the most serious problems. It is not just his ability to find interesting ideas. His knowledge in various fields allows him to do what he does. He is the embodiment of a student who has studied many disciplines at his university, which is the business he creates.
If you want to optimize something, optimize for the long term. Use today's problems to become a master of your craft. There is no guarantee that any enterprise will be successful, but the resulting skill will play in your favor for a long period of your career.
PS for publicity
Despite the lack of guarantees of success, there are several well-established methods that can help an entrepreneur to avoid the risk of spending huge amounts of money and energy to create an unnecessary product for anyone. Lean Startup is an entrepreneurial concept for quickly testing ideas and choosing a business model. Using this approach, companies can design products and services that meet the expectations and needs of customers, without the need for large amounts of primary funding or costly product launches.
Business is associated with risks arising from situations of uncertainty. It is not known whether the new product will be popular with customers, whether there will be enough investment and income not to fall into the liquidity gap. At the beginning of business it is important to make decisions that do not increase potential losses.
So, the way to purchase your own servers and equipment, which in case of failure will have to be sold at a large discount, may not be the most optimal. In conditions of high risks, the option of renting or using the so-called IaaS services (infrastructure as a service) and SaaS (software as a service) can be more efficient. Flexibility and the ability to quickly scale up are key benefits of the cloud that are useful for startups operating under extreme uncertainty.
“Cut your way to success”, “meet the right people”, “become a business superstar”. They found their silver bullet. They can boast of passive income from the web business, all the time traveling around the world, while the rest of the mortals work in their workplaces 9 hours 5 days a week.
In a world where we are looking for silver bullets, these people seem to have gathered an arsenal of them. Moreover, they found an audience that is ready to massively buy their “silver bullets”.
')
The most graphic examples of this are some of the followers of the ideas of the book “How to work 4 hours a week and not hang around in the office from call to call, live anywhere and be rich” by Timothy Ferriss (The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss ). The negative point is not in the book itself. Ferris does describe some interesting resource management tips to get the most out of your work. However, undesirable, in my opinion, is the hacker mentality for success, generated by him in business circles (hack-your-way-to-success mentality).
This thinking is contrary to all that I know about entrepreneurship. This is the way of thinking that I see when people say that they have a great idea and they want to give the development to the young college student who knows how to code, or outsource their work to regions with low labor costs. This is a thinking that suggests that entrepreneurship is a series of activities to create and strengthen business connections and fundraising meetings, and even allow for the existence of some silver bullet business connections that will replace a real sales strategy. This leads to a passive approach in a very complicated matter.
What is missing in all this is an installation on skill; the fact that the main driver of success is actually experience and a focused focus on the development of skills in their profession / craft, and not some risky series of “hacks”.
What is happening on the periphery - be it the cheeky jokes that we see on Twitter from IT celebrities, or the headlines in TechCrunch, in fact, do not make sense as a basis for a business or a profession. As well as the number of meetings or network events you have scheduled. At best, these things are tertiary, and at worst, simply distracting factors.
Success in a career requires application and accumulation of experience. This implies that for any company you either provide expertise, or you are a passive observer. Masters in their field are drivers. The added value is created by their experience gained from the inquisitiveness of the mind, and a serious attitude towards their craft.
Starting a business is by its nature an intensive course in recruiting experience and expertise. The uniqueness of startups is the lack of resources. Lack of resources forces the founders to quickly adapt their skills to meet any project needs.
“I didn’t know how to do it, so I just needed to understand it,” is what I regularly hear from successful founders, whereas “I couldn’t find someone to make X, so I had to think whether to continue at all ” is common for the founders of unsuccessful startups.
If you accept this challenge, you will understand that a startup is nothing more than a “simulator”. In fact, this is an excellent teacher precisely because of the need for the rapid accumulation of knowledge to run in a short time to survive a business.
For example, a founder with technical knowledge and experience sufficient to work in a large company must adapt and gain more experience in related technical areas, since human resources are not enough to simply transfer these tasks to another specialist.
This is also true for solving problems in other non-technical areas, be it sales, finance, marketing, management or design. For a successful launch should be interested in this activity. There will be no one to fill these roles at an early stage.
In the study of these previously unknown “territories” for them, the founders are faced with the headwind of starting a business, and it becomes clear that a startup is only about professional growth and character development. With any level of actual success of a venture project, subject to the whims of external forces, this growth is an intangible dividend that makes this experience invaluable.
That is why the idea of ​​a passive 4-hour week will self-destruct. Relaxing on the beach or traveling the world instead of actively participating in creating an arsenal of your own knowledge and skills is professional negligence.
Moreover, it is not associated with practical applicability. No serious company was created passively. Passive thinking makes people think, “I have a great idea. I will hire a team to implement it ”or“ I have an acquaintance who will move sales up while I play in a visionary chair. ” Start-up cemeteries are full of visionaries with no expertise or proper skills to implement ideas, because they are not executed by themselves, but are realized thanks to the intense influence of skilled personnel.
The most important thing is that by thinking of business as a series of hacks and transactional relationships, you will never gather experience with which your future “me” and future business will succeed. Of course, the expertise of the founders alone may not be enough. However, this is what allows you to deal with the difficulties in creating a business. You do not just work on the idea, you get the knowledge that will help you succeed in the following projects.
It is the experience and skill that allow someone like Elon Musk to move from project to project and from sector to sector, having knowledge of how to solve the most serious problems. It is not just his ability to find interesting ideas. His knowledge in various fields allows him to do what he does. He is the embodiment of a student who has studied many disciplines at his university, which is the business he creates.
If you want to optimize something, optimize for the long term. Use today's problems to become a master of your craft. There is no guarantee that any enterprise will be successful, but the resulting skill will play in your favor for a long period of your career.
PS for publicity
Despite the lack of guarantees of success, there are several well-established methods that can help an entrepreneur to avoid the risk of spending huge amounts of money and energy to create an unnecessary product for anyone. Lean Startup is an entrepreneurial concept for quickly testing ideas and choosing a business model. Using this approach, companies can design products and services that meet the expectations and needs of customers, without the need for large amounts of primary funding or costly product launches.
Business is associated with risks arising from situations of uncertainty. It is not known whether the new product will be popular with customers, whether there will be enough investment and income not to fall into the liquidity gap. At the beginning of business it is important to make decisions that do not increase potential losses.
So, the way to purchase your own servers and equipment, which in case of failure will have to be sold at a large discount, may not be the most optimal. In conditions of high risks, the option of renting or using the so-called IaaS services (infrastructure as a service) and SaaS (software as a service) can be more efficient. Flexibility and the ability to quickly scale up are key benefits of the cloud that are useful for startups operating under extreme uncertainty.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/349308/
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