“It is always your fault”
You are the company builder, you are the creative force behind the business and its leader. The recruitment process takes too long to bring in the right talent, the website crashes, google stops your ads, the client doesn’t pay on time, your bank can’t execute a transfer. In the company building context, all of these “uncontrollable” things are unfortunately all your fault.
As harsh as it may sound, it’s the reality of being a company-builder. On the flipside, it is the beauty of leading a company when it all goes well.
You should have prepared better, you should have moved tech development somewhere else, you should have pushed your service provider harder, you should have been more into the details, you should have crafted a plan B, C, D & E etc. – whatever it takes!
No one else is there to fix things for you and in the company-builder role we simply can’t afford to blame others or blame the circumstances – we must instead make sure we bring our teams to success.
Don’t be afraid of competition, be afraid of no competition
Every successful company has competition and has had it almost since day one.
Don’t be afraid of competition – in an early stage industry, competition is rather validating that there is a market for what you are selling, rather than constituting a direct threat to your business.
The competition might also play an important role, side-by-side with yourself, educating the market about your particular service and why it’s needed – in this way, they might fit half of that long term “market educational bill” for you.
Overall, in the early phases of an industry, be much more concerned if you have no competition – this might mean that you are in the wrong place. Early stage company-builders, their investors and other stakeholders show a consistent over-propensity to “freak out” as soon as they discover competitors.
Your management team will worry, your staff will worry, your suppliers will worry and you will worry . The key is to focus on the right competitive advantages – the only things your competitors can not copy is your company culture, your core business philosophies, your people and your individual attitudes.
If these core engines for success are strong within your company, you will beat competitor after competitor, no matter how big or small.
All the other pieces of your business, your competitors can and will copy, much faster than you expect – and you should do the same with their strengths as well!
Think Burger King vs McDonald’s – you will ultimately always face down competitors that on a surface level look more or less identical to yourself.
Let others doubt
The challenge of building a large company from scratch is primarily a challenge you fight in your own mind.
How badly do you want to get to success? How hard are you willing to push yourself to hit this month’s target, the next one, and the next one after that? How many sales calls with rejections are you able to take before you give up? How much will you be listening to family, friends and “experts” unanimously telling you that it’s better to give up and do something else that is “safe and secure” and/or less painful?
The only way around these constant negative external mental influences is to brace your mind.
In my opinion, real big goals can only be achieved after you have swum through an ocean of pain – pushing and fighting to stay afloat.
No company has ever been built from scratch to success in a straight line. There are always deep dark valleys and euphoric highs of highs. When you and your company is in a deep dark valley, the voices of the doubters will grow louder and your mind will be ever more susceptible to them.
In these phases, its critical that you brace yourself, not make any rash decisions about your company’s future and in turn develop the perseverance to just keep powering on towards your great goal and vision.
Thereafter, when you are back in another high (I promise, it will come), only then is the time to check in again with yourself on the future of your business.
Keep the “end game“ closely in mind
When we are building a company partly/fully with someone else’s money (i.e. our investors’ money) we must remember the basic logic of finance: that same someone will want their money back one day, with a (big or guaranteed) return added on top.
Once the company funding is all consumed, there are really only two end stations: a) you have reached breakeven and/or b) you want more money because you need it to keep the company going/growing.
Breakeven brings independence. Asking for more money only works if there is still strong and wide investor confidence in what you are building.
Typically, you need to be able to credibly and concretely demonstrate to investors that you have invested their money in such a way that you have generated more business traction than 90-95% of your company-building peers out there.
If you can neither show them this type of track record, nor reach breakeven, the end game naturally looks a lot less shiny.
It’s critical to remember that if you are building companies with investors’ money – the day the money is depleted, they will come back and check what has been built.
Stay tuned for Part IV – I’ll try to channel the requests I’ve received for specific topics into this fourth part in the series.
Until next time, let’s build it!
Building, investing & exiting in Southeast Asia
