I know people who have all the skills to build great businesses. But
they’ll never do so, because they could never go to work only to, at the
end of the month, in exchange for working eighty hours a week, write
the firm a check.
Unless you have built firms and shepherded them to successful
exits, or have access to seed capital (most don’t, and it’s always
expensive), then you’ll need to pay the company for the right to work
your ass off until you can raise money. And most start-ups never raise
the needed money. Most people can’t wrap their head around the
notion of working without getting paid—and 99 percent plus will never
risk their own capital for the pleasure of... working.
Are you comfortable with public failure?
Most failures are private: you decide law school isn’t for you (bombed
the LSAT); you decide to spend more time with your kids (got fired),
or you’re working on a bunch of “projects” (can’t get a job). However,
there’s no hiding with your own business failure. It’s you, and if you’re
so awesome, it must succeed... right? Wrong, and when it doesn’t, it
feels like elementary school, where the marketplace is a sixth grader
laughing at you because you’ve wet your pants... times a hundred.
Do you like to sell?
“Entrepreneur” is a synonym for “salesperson.” Selling people to join
your firm, selling them to stay at your firm, selling investors, and (oh
yeah) selling customers. It doesn’t matter if you’re running the corner
store or Pinterest, if you plan to start a business, you’d better be damn
good at selling. Selling is calling people who don’t want to hear from
you, pretending to like them, getting treated poorly, and then calling
them again. I likely won’t start another business because my ego is
getting too big (and my intestinal fortitude too weak) to sell.
I, incorrectly, believe that our collective genius at L2 should mean
the product sells itself—and sometimes it does. There has to be a
product that doesn’t require you to get out the spoon and publicly eat
shit over and over. Actually, no, there isn’t.
Google has an algorithm that can answer anything and identify
people who have explicitly declared an interest in buying your product,