I’m such a sucker for a “yes, AND” mentality. Where I say “lets go jump that fence.” and someone else says, “AND let’s try to ride the cows on the other side.” No hesitation, no conversations around the risks of doing either of these things - just default to action.
Limited Partners, I assure you… we have D&O insurance… I think.
This mentality has gotten me in a few sticky, what some would consider, “Near Death” situations: A boat, a cape buffalo, an ocean, a river and a cliff. Yet still I would preach that this optimistic perspective compounds on itself and gets you moving forward, additionally they always make for an interesting story.
This mentality has also paid dividends at Boost VC time and time again. Where I have defaulted yes to doing things rather than not doing things. I got my first institutional LP by taking a chance, the time I met Vitalik I flew to North Carolina for a conference, the time we ran an accelerator 6 weeks after coming up with the idea. Boost VC in itself was an iterative experiment in just helping founders.
In building experience or a startup, you are rewarded for movement and action. You are punished for stagnation and thinking too much.
After investing in 400 startups, the founders who live in a state of constant movement seem to perform exponentially better than the ones who are smarter, think harder, and take longer to make decisions.
The point of this post is to push a founder or individual to do something today. Launch the product, talk to the customer, inspire the team. Be uncomfortable in the movement forward. There’s no protocol at the earliest stages on how to do these things, there’s only experimentation, iteration and effort.
Well, you did jump over the fence, just that you did not want to ride cows with us.. ;)