The qualities of a successful entrepreneur - Perseverance (1/11)
With this post, I begin translating the Mark Custer cycle of posts about the quality of successful entrepreneurs.
_________
This is the first part of my new series of posts on what makes an entrepreneur successful . Originally, I published them on the VentureHacks site, one of my favorite sites for entrepreneurs. If you have not been there, then you should go.
I also wanted to publish this series here so that it becomes a resource for future entrepreneurs who visit my blog. I wanted comments to start a discussion on each topic, because I believe that comments have the same value as the post itself (I already noted this in Comments are the New Black ). Therefore, I will sign out some topics in more detail than on VentureHacks, so that those who have already read my post there will also be interested.
')
One of the questions that I constantly have to answer as a venture capitalist is “what do you pay attention to when making an investment?” I have already publicly stated that 70% of an investment decision is based on a team, and this especially concerns the founders. I have seen people who have attended the best educational institutions, received the best grades and worked in the most correct companies fail.
What skills are needed to become a successful entrepreneur? What qualities do I pay attention to in the process? Having been in the shoes of an entrepreneur twice, I made a list of the necessary skills in my opinion. This post is dedicated to the first of ten, which I am going to write about.
1. Perseverance . Persistence is perhaps the most important entrepreneurial quality. This is a person who never gives up, never accepts "no" as an answer. The world is filled with doubting subjects who claim that something cannot be done, and then, when everything is done, they say "I knew that nothing would come of it." Look at google. Do you think someone seriously believed in 1999 that the two young guys who graduated from Stanford University would be able to take Yahoo !, Excite, Ask Jeeves and Lycos off the run? How so. Believe me, whatever you come up with, most venture capitalists will tell you something like: “social networks already exist”, “you will never make deals with a telecom operator” or “Google already has a product in this area”. The people you are planning to hire will say that they are not sure whether they should join your team, the landlord will ask for rent for the year in advance, and the potential business development partner will be too busy to work with you: “come in 6 months” .
If you already have a working startup, you all know it. But some founders have an extra quality that allows them to never give up. Sometimes it even reaches arrogance. And I see this increased dose of perseverance in only one out of ten entrepreneurs that I have to deal with. If you are not one of them, then you probably know this. And your friend takes matters further than you would do it. What do you get, going further out of the comfort zone and showing more perseverance? This is really what separates the wheat from the chaff.
Once I entered into a dispute with a well-known venture capitalist at a meeting. The presenter asked the question: “if an entrepreneur sends an email to a venture capitalist, but he does not answer what to do?”. He replied: “Move down the list. He is not interested. ” Without thinking, I blurted out: "This is the worst advice for an entrepreneur I have ever heard." Hell. I could not believe what I said, but it was so deeply felt that the words themselves flew out of my mouth.
If you give up on the first unanswered letter, what do you hope for going to entrepreneurs? If you are an entrepreneur, people are not obliged to answer you, and it is your responsibility to remain politely but persistently in their field of vision. You are no longer working at Google, Oracle, Salesforce.com or McKinsey, where everyone calls you back. You cannot even imagine how important that brand was until you left it. Your clients don't care where you studied: at Stanford, Harvard, or MIT. Now you are just you. Honestly, even if you studied at a college in Florida, according to the graph of persistence you will not lose anything from it. Perseverance is paying off.
Simple example
When I launched my second company, I was a newcomer to Silicon Valley. The previous 11 years I spent in Europe and Japan. My company was relatively unknown. We launched a cloud-based document management system in a space that came to be called Enterprise 2.0. So it turned out that a conference organized by a man named Ismael Galimi was soon to be held. He was a highly respected software manager and at the time also led a blog for companies from this space.
This was his first conference, and prominent venture capitalists from Silicon Valley were going to participate in it. Also present were the press and various senior executives from companies in this sector. I asked my friends from Lewis PR to introduce me to Ismael, who invited me to speak at the conference. He sent me a schedule, according to which I had to speak on the second day in the afternoon session in a small room. Tree sticks.
I wrote to Ismael asking for a performance on the first day and a place on the stage during the plenary session with Om Malik, Shel Israel, Rajeen Shet (from Google), Karen Leavitt (WebEx) and Ismael himself. He replied that it was impossible. I wrote to him again, assuring the sincerity of my intentions, and asked again. He, being a very courteous man, exceptionally politely refused me. I asked a friend to write to him, mentioning how well I speak at such meetings. I called Ismael and listed a lot of reasons why I would perfectly fit into the situation. He said that he would think, but that the stage was already full of people. “Yes, but not a single startup is represented on the scene.” It seems to me that balance will be better with me. ”
I asked for a meeting at breakfast to discuss this. I know that he really did not want to see me on stage, but I understood that it was very, very important for people to know about me. I groped the limits of what was permitted, but did not cross it. In the end, he gave up, and this was a very important session for me in initially informing people about the Koral project. The photo above was taken at that event (its author is Dan Farber, writing for ZDNet ). In the end, Ismael and I became good friends, and I miss him from the time I moved to Los Angeles.
Those who know me well have an idea that this is just an ordinary day in the life of Mark Saster. Not everything is always good, but this is part of my DNA. I can do nothing about it. And this is one of the qualities that I pay attention to entrepreneurs. Some companies make insufficient effort. Others go beyond what is permitted. I would be happy to offer you a formula for the necessary amount of assertiveness, but, as I have always said, this is a kind of art - when you see this, you will immediately find out.
Next post of the series: 2. Practical grip.
_________
This is the first part of my new series of posts on what makes an entrepreneur successful . Originally, I published them on the VentureHacks site, one of my favorite sites for entrepreneurs. If you have not been there, then you should go.
I also wanted to publish this series here so that it becomes a resource for future entrepreneurs who visit my blog. I wanted comments to start a discussion on each topic, because I believe that comments have the same value as the post itself (I already noted this in Comments are the New Black ). Therefore, I will sign out some topics in more detail than on VentureHacks, so that those who have already read my post there will also be interested.
')
One of the questions that I constantly have to answer as a venture capitalist is “what do you pay attention to when making an investment?” I have already publicly stated that 70% of an investment decision is based on a team, and this especially concerns the founders. I have seen people who have attended the best educational institutions, received the best grades and worked in the most correct companies fail.
What skills are needed to become a successful entrepreneur? What qualities do I pay attention to in the process? Having been in the shoes of an entrepreneur twice, I made a list of the necessary skills in my opinion. This post is dedicated to the first of ten, which I am going to write about.
1. Perseverance . Persistence is perhaps the most important entrepreneurial quality. This is a person who never gives up, never accepts "no" as an answer. The world is filled with doubting subjects who claim that something cannot be done, and then, when everything is done, they say "I knew that nothing would come of it." Look at google. Do you think someone seriously believed in 1999 that the two young guys who graduated from Stanford University would be able to take Yahoo !, Excite, Ask Jeeves and Lycos off the run? How so. Believe me, whatever you come up with, most venture capitalists will tell you something like: “social networks already exist”, “you will never make deals with a telecom operator” or “Google already has a product in this area”. The people you are planning to hire will say that they are not sure whether they should join your team, the landlord will ask for rent for the year in advance, and the potential business development partner will be too busy to work with you: “come in 6 months” .
If you already have a working startup, you all know it. But some founders have an extra quality that allows them to never give up. Sometimes it even reaches arrogance. And I see this increased dose of perseverance in only one out of ten entrepreneurs that I have to deal with. If you are not one of them, then you probably know this. And your friend takes matters further than you would do it. What do you get, going further out of the comfort zone and showing more perseverance? This is really what separates the wheat from the chaff.
Once I entered into a dispute with a well-known venture capitalist at a meeting. The presenter asked the question: “if an entrepreneur sends an email to a venture capitalist, but he does not answer what to do?”. He replied: “Move down the list. He is not interested. ” Without thinking, I blurted out: "This is the worst advice for an entrepreneur I have ever heard." Hell. I could not believe what I said, but it was so deeply felt that the words themselves flew out of my mouth.
If you give up on the first unanswered letter, what do you hope for going to entrepreneurs? If you are an entrepreneur, people are not obliged to answer you, and it is your responsibility to remain politely but persistently in their field of vision. You are no longer working at Google, Oracle, Salesforce.com or McKinsey, where everyone calls you back. You cannot even imagine how important that brand was until you left it. Your clients don't care where you studied: at Stanford, Harvard, or MIT. Now you are just you. Honestly, even if you studied at a college in Florida, according to the graph of persistence you will not lose anything from it. Perseverance is paying off.
Simple example
When I launched my second company, I was a newcomer to Silicon Valley. The previous 11 years I spent in Europe and Japan. My company was relatively unknown. We launched a cloud-based document management system in a space that came to be called Enterprise 2.0. So it turned out that a conference organized by a man named Ismael Galimi was soon to be held. He was a highly respected software manager and at the time also led a blog for companies from this space.
This was his first conference, and prominent venture capitalists from Silicon Valley were going to participate in it. Also present were the press and various senior executives from companies in this sector. I asked my friends from Lewis PR to introduce me to Ismael, who invited me to speak at the conference. He sent me a schedule, according to which I had to speak on the second day in the afternoon session in a small room. Tree sticks.
I wrote to Ismael asking for a performance on the first day and a place on the stage during the plenary session with Om Malik, Shel Israel, Rajeen Shet (from Google), Karen Leavitt (WebEx) and Ismael himself. He replied that it was impossible. I wrote to him again, assuring the sincerity of my intentions, and asked again. He, being a very courteous man, exceptionally politely refused me. I asked a friend to write to him, mentioning how well I speak at such meetings. I called Ismael and listed a lot of reasons why I would perfectly fit into the situation. He said that he would think, but that the stage was already full of people. “Yes, but not a single startup is represented on the scene.” It seems to me that balance will be better with me. ”
I asked for a meeting at breakfast to discuss this. I know that he really did not want to see me on stage, but I understood that it was very, very important for people to know about me. I groped the limits of what was permitted, but did not cross it. In the end, he gave up, and this was a very important session for me in initially informing people about the Koral project. The photo above was taken at that event (its author is Dan Farber, writing for ZDNet ). In the end, Ismael and I became good friends, and I miss him from the time I moved to Los Angeles.
Those who know me well have an idea that this is just an ordinary day in the life of Mark Saster. Not everything is always good, but this is part of my DNA. I can do nothing about it. And this is one of the qualities that I pay attention to entrepreneurs. Some companies make insufficient effort. Others go beyond what is permitted. I would be happy to offer you a formula for the necessary amount of assertiveness, but, as I have always said, this is a kind of art - when you see this, you will immediately find out.
Next post of the series: 2. Practical grip.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/82183/
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