Entrepreneurship cannot be formulaic
What's the difference between an entrepreneur and a businessman/woman?
A businessperson walks the path that has already been carved. Selling a product that customers are familiar with, in a market which already exists, where there is extreme competition and little to no differentiation.
An entrepreneur carves their own path. They sell a product customers didn't know could exist, creating a market from scratch and convincing the market that their product SHOULD exist.
Innovation by nature is a virgin.
It takes a different breed of human to say I don't like how the world functions currently, so I am going to devote my life to changing how it works.
How can you have a formula for something that doesn't even exist?
When you set out to build a startup, no formulae work, only principles.
So here are mine -
1. (A problem the world wants to solve) ∩ (a problem you DEEPLY care about).
The world is highly dysfunctional because humans are dysfunctional. As a result, there are a lot of problems that CAN be solved. But that does not mean they SHOULD be solved.
Example - A smart toothpaste dispenser which can tell you the % of toothpaste left so you don't have to waste time squeezing the last ounce.
It IS a problem but not a problem WORTH solving.
On top of that, it should definitely be a problem you deeply care about. Because when you are backed against the wall, if you don't DEEPLY care about the problem, your first instinct won't be to break the goddamn wall.
2. A vision of the end customer experience.
No formula means you can't walk towards your goal. You have to stand in the future and walk backwards.
Edwin Land made the Polaroid because his daughter asked why she couldn't see the photo he had just taken. He didn't think of just improving the camera. He saw the end result - a photo in your hand in under a minute then reverse-engineered it into a product.
Steve Jobs said, "You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology.”
The vision doesn’t need to be a detailed plan. It needs to be so clear that you could describe what a customer’s life looks like after your product exists.
With it, you can move forward even if you have to carve the road yourself.
3. Balls of steel
I use this phrase as a figure of speech. It is absolutely irrespective of gender.
Entrepreneurship is not for the weak. It teaches you life lessons in the most brutal way possible.
Since there is no formula, there is no one to blame either. It is YOU vs YOU every day.
Win or lose, there is only one person responsible: you.
You need to live to fight another day, even when nothing seems to be working.
That's the hard part.
So, how the hell do you keep going?
By DEEPLY caring about the problem. By obsessing over the final customer experience. And refusing to accept a world where your product doesn't exist.
COME.WHAT.FUCKING.MAY.