Page 190 - 6 Secrets to Startup Success

CHAPTER EIGHT

Staying Power

Give Your Venture Time
to Take Flight

“It’s not that I’m so smart. It’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
—Albert Einstein

You can do everything well. You can prepare yourself as a founder,
aim for a robust market, design an economically sound business
model, move forward with flexibility, and surround yourself with
straightforward truth-tellers. Still, getting your venture safely off the
ground will likely take more of your time, money, and effort than you
expect. Most great ideas require time to work, and it may take a long
series of sparks to finally create a roaring fire. Just as overnight suc-
cesses are often decades in the making, “home run” businesses are
most often due to the accumulation of many swings at the plate,
where founding teams persevere over time to seize opportunities that
couldn’t have been scheduled, or even anticipated, in advance.

Unfortunately, one of the common side effects of falling in love
with a business idea is the founder’s assumption that success will come
quickly and easily. Due to the nearly universal tendency to over-

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