Page 53 - The Bootstrapper Bible

ChangeThis Starting a business is the most public, most expensive, riskiest way of all to be wrong. Faced with all the sensitivity analysis and business model mumbo-jumbo I talk about in this section, you might find it easy just to give up. “Iʼm never gonna be as smart as Bill Gates, so I give up!” Yeah, well, Bill Gates isnʼt so smart. Bill Gates thought the Internet was a fad. Bill Gates launched three database systems, all of which failed. Thereʼs never been an entrepreneur with a crystal ball. Thereʼs no way to know for sure whether your business is going to work, whether your targeted customers will buy, whether your choice of technology is a good one. Youʼre going to be wrong. Get used to it! Consumer products are almost impossible to bootstrap. Especially [if they] need to be sold in thousands of drugstores in order to be profitable. In the face of this uncertainty, it seems to me that the very worst thing you can do is fail to try. I went to business school at Stanford, which prides itself on being very entrepreneurial. Of the 300 people in my class, at least half publicly proclaimed that they were going to start their own businesses sooner or later. Now, twenty years later, only about 30 of us have actually done it. The rest are still wait- ing for the right time or the right idea or the right backing. Theyʼre waiting for an engraved invitation and some guarantee of success. Silicon Valley has been a tremendous boon for this country. One reason is that it has created a culture where being wrong is okay. Being wrong can even make you rich in the Valley! But | iss. 6.01 | i | U | X | + | h 53/103 f