Strong Opinions @marksbirch

There seems to be a missing ingredient in a lot of today’s startups.  When I talk to entrepreneurs about their ideas, one of the things I look for is passion.  While intelligence and persistence and risk taking are important traits, what brings all of those skills together towards achieving a goal is passion.  However, I am worried that a lot of founders do not have the conviction of their beliefs to give their startups a fighting chance.  The number one reason startups fail is because there is no passion!

One of the culprits for the passion deficit is the Lean Startup Movement*.  For those not yet in the know, it is a method of building products using iterative customer feedback to identify a solution that addresses a customer problem and can become a scalable business.  In theory, it helps entrepreneurs focus on relevant problems that are worthwhile solving before spending a ton of time and resources, which could have prevented such famous blowups like Webvan and Pets.com.

In the zeal for finding a worthwhile problem however, entrepreneurs get farther away from their vision.  The lean methodology encourages incredibly quick iterations and actively encourages the discarding of ideas, all in the name of finding something that appears to be “traction”.  This is a code word that essentially means customer acceptance of the proposed solution.  Thus what an entrepreneur may end up pursuing based on these “traction” markers could be a radical departure from the original idea.

If there is any certainty at all in entrepreneurship, it is that ideas take time to develop and to take hold.  The guy that helped popularize soy milk in America spent over 20 years executing on his vision before he started making profits with his Silk product line.  The founder behind VitaminWater would haul crates of the drink to stores himself in his car for several years before it became a breakout beverage product, and sold the company for $4.1 billion.  Most tech startups take a few years before finally gaining significant market share and an appreciable customer base.

Thus, it seems strange to pursue an idea, just to abandon it when the going gets tough or the response is not overwhelming positive.  The greatest leaps in innovations lead people, not from getting pulled by people.  While the idea that you iterated on could be really interesting and successful, is it really the idea that you were really passionate about?  Was that what your vision was about?

To be clear, self-doubt and depression are par for the course.  You will run into plenty of unseen roadblocks and make near catastrophic mistakes.  Evan Williams of Twitter fame talked about his struggles to keep his popular blog platform Blogger alive for months without any money.  The path is never very clear when you are building something from scratch.  Naysayer and skeptics will shoot holes in your idea.  There is no manual, no script and no answers when building a business or creating a technology.  You have to simply take the approach that what comes may come.  You have no idea what tomorrow is going to bring, so why worry about what is not in your control?  Just gut through and keep your eyes on the vision.

You cannot fake passion.  You either have it or you do not.  If you are hunting around for an idea to run with, I have significant doubts about your startup’s future.  If you are pursuing a solution for a problem where you have zero experience or would not be a consumer of said product, then I have to question your motives.  Neither comes from a strong, passionate belief.  They are simply business ideas that could be successful, but as smaller businesses.  It is not a recipe for breakout, revolutionary businesses and products.  The truly innovative and disruptive ideas come from passion which fuels the entrepreneurial persistence and stubbornness to make it succeed.

* This is not meant as a missive of Lean Startup, as there is value in the methodology for decision making and customer focus.  However, many entrepreneurs misuse the concepts for quick win startup schemes.