JFDI Mentor Rowan Simpson shared his insights on the reality of life as a startup founder last night to an audience of 50 entrepreneurs and students at Singapore Management University (SMU). In his talk, he debunked common myths surrounding startup growth and founder lifestyles. The talk was based off of his popular blog series by the same name.
What was his advice to the founders in the audience?
1. Your idea doesn’t have to be original
“Steve Jobs didn’t invent computers, mp3s, computer animation, or tablets but he figured out what they are for, how to make people love them, and how to price them.”
TradeMe, the auction and classifieds site which Rowan & his team built and sold for NZ$750MM, wasn’t an original idea; neither were giants Google, Facebook, or Amazon.com. These companies succeeded because they took an idea/business that existed, figured out what it was for, and then built companies tbat served customer needs better than the existing businesses did.
2. People are your most important asset
“People are to startups what location is to real estate” – Paul Graham
It takes a team to build a startup, not just a single founder. In the early stages, founders are usually generalists who can fill multiple roles.
Is there a magic number of founders? No, but Rowan recommends 2-3 founders. Paul Graham says 1 is too few; you should be able to convince at least one other person to join your company if it is a good idea. Rowan believes 4 is too many: “If there are four of you, one of you will be Ringo.”
3. Forward momentum is key
“Does it make the boat go faster?” was the marketing slogan used by the New Zealand national sailing team during 2000 America’s Cup. A series of advertisements ran in which the team hacked the boat and their habits to increase the boat’s speed. Coincidentally, New Zealand won the race.
Rowan advises founders to follow that mantra and focus only on work that makes their startup go faster. He said, “The #1 challenge for companies is to get forward momentum.” To do so, Rowan recommends having a number to obsess about – choose a metric that demonstrates your company is gaining momentum (for TradeMe, Rowan focused on increasing the number of unique sellers). Constantly work at increasing the value of that number.
And if your startup isn’t moving anywhere? You may need to rethink your business strategy. “You can always adjust course but until you are moving forward, it doesn’t matter. You can’t steer a boat that isn’t moving,” said Rowan.
The boat below isn’t going anywhere…no matter what the sailors do:
