Remember when I said the one thing an angel or VC can bet on with confidence is the team, and whether or not that team will be able to figure things out? Regardless of how cool the product is, or how amazing the technology is, or how great your prospects are, there are things wrong with your company that you’ll need to figure out. To figure some of these things out, it’s going to take you making a wrong decision and going deep down a wrong path. You will spend a lot of effort on this before you realize you need to change direction. This will unexpectedly chew up enormous amounts of your runway. Your time.
It’s up to you as a founder to make sure you don’t run out of this one critical resource.
In my previous company we made substantial direction changes (pivots) three times in about five years. That’s a lot of changes. But we did some things along the way to make sure we never ran out of time. In the early stages, maybe that means you:
—work a consulting gig to pay the bills while you figure out your company or product
—pivot to a services business to pay some bills as you’re building out your technologies
—attack a customer base that is easier money but might not serve a long-term vision
—get better mentors and advisers to help point out when you’re not focused properly
—become more coachable so you actually listen to them
The point is, do whatever it takes to extend your runway. Because it doesn’t matter how good you are, how great your technology is, or how amazing your potential is if you run out of time to prove it.
So, let’s repeat for clarity…
—build your network
—ask for advice
—date along the way
—let the money come to you
—build measurable momentum
—hypothesize your theories
—test them
—create a formula for success
—don’t run out of time
[Editor’s note: This post was originally published on Al’s blog.]
