Through the wilderness
The hard reality of a startup's early days
What’s your vision of a startup’s earliest days? I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that my vision before my current journey was wildly romantic. Creating a startup, in my imagination, would follow the traditional hero’s journey. An everyday person with deep curiosity would be struck by an idea, overcome by a vision, compelled to bring that vision to reality. So this visionary first-time founder would start exploring, asking questions, and growing increasingly inspired. Along the way, this hero-founder would progressively meet and join up with a series of individuals who may diverge radically in personality but would somehow complement the vision of the hero.
This founding team would toil away in obscurity, facing one technical challenge after another as they progressively brought the vision to reality. I’m envisioning a Bay area garage, and a good montage. Maybe some stormy debates with one or more characters walking away, fuming, but all the while making inexorable progress.
Then, the big breakthough. The team gets a chance to pitch a VC. But it all goes wrong: the VC is a strong no. Money dwindling, the founding team looks hopeless. They soulfully reconsider the path they’re on. The hero-founder is about to throw in the towel, when a motivating encounter with a mentor changes their perspective. The hero re-assembles the team, gives a good speech, they make another hard push, they overcome obstacles, they get the VC check, they launch to accolades from the tech press, it’s all hockey stick growth and Dom Perignon.
Apparently my formative memories of Rocky, Star Wars, and Rudy have more of a hold on my imagination than HBO’s Silicon Valley and Fincher & Sorkin’s The Social Network.
I’ve built 0-1 products before, at Bloomberg and Airbnb and Loom. Each of these journeys was exciting and exhausting in their own ways, and resulted in a spread of outcomes (RIP Bloomberg Real Estate and Sports). But the one thing these experiences all shared was what they lacked. As new products in existing, successful businesses, they missed the “invisible” part of starting a company, the “before 0” part of the journey. The idea maze.
I first came across the concept of the “idea maze” from Chris Dixon, but he borrowed it from an incredible one-time class taught at Stanford by Balaji Srinivasan called “Startup Engineering”, which explored both the “nitty-gritty details” and “philosophy” of startups. In the fifth lecture in the class, Balaji explores the relationship between an idea, execution, and the market. He models the path from idea to profitable company as a state machine:
“When it comes to starting a business,” Balaji writes, “the conventional wisdom is that the idea is everything”. He compares this view against “the new conventiona; wisdom” that “it’s not the idea, it’s the execution”, and also Marc Andreessen’s “new-new conventional wisdom” that “it’s neither the product/idea or the team/execution but rather the market”. Balaji concludes with a question: “As important as the execution is, without a clear vision of where you want your company to go, you will never come up with an idea that others want to copy. So how do you come up with a good idea?” His answer: the idea maze.
An idea maze sounds like a purely intellectual exercise. Maybe it even sounds fun! Let me disabuse you of that notion. You see, when humans typically think of mazes, they’re thinking top down: you’re looking at the maze from above, and you’re trying to trace from start to finish. The maze is fixed, it’s solvable.
Well, two things about the idea maze. First, it’s not fixed. The finish is moving. New walls form, other walls fall down. There’s occasional chasms in the path.
And second? You’re not the scientist. You’re the rat.
You are in the maze. You have no idea of its size, no idea of its complexity, no bearing for how it’s moving. There’s other rats racing to the same or similar finish, and if they reach the finish before you, you not only miss out on the cheese, you might get a nasty electrical zap.
Sound fun yet?
There’s only one solution: pull yourself above the maze. Somehow overcome your perspective to get that top-down view. Balaji writes:
A good idea means a bird’s eye view of the idea maze…. Anyone can point out the entrance to the maze, but few can think through all the branches. … [A] strong new plan for navigating the idea maze usually requires an obsession with the market, a unique insight from deep thought that others did not see, a hidden door.
This whole journey is very far away from that hero’s journey archetype. But there’s another archetypal story that matches it: the Biblical Exodus.
For those not caught up on their Bible, the Exodus story goes like this: the Israelite people have gone from being the saviors of Egypt to, hundreds of years later, subjugated slaves. In the midst of this abysmal situation, the God of the Israelites’ ancestors appears to a culturally-Egyptian Israelite and escaped murderer named Moses. Charisma isn’t Moses’s strong suit, but like many founding engineers he pairs up with his more sales-y brother Aaron to confront Pharaoh and miraculously lead the Israelites out of Egypt, and to freedom! Everything looks great. The Israelites are on to the promised land when… things go very, very wrong. The Israelites make some decidedly poor choices, and end up wandering in the desert for 40 years. Only after the entire generation of ex-slaves dies off are their children finally permitted to enter the promised land.
The idea maze is that desert wandering. It’s the hard reality that meets the euphoria of your original inspiration. An incredible future is within sight! You’ve embarked on the journey, and the destination is right over the next hill – except it isn’t. It’s who knows how far away. And all the while you’re living off of a pretty meager lifestyle, and suddenly the life you had before your idea wasn’t so bad after all.
The path out, the path to the promised land, is the hard truth: just as the generation of Israelite slaves needed to die, so does the “dream” of your startup vision. Don’t give up the zeal for your mission. But drop the idea that you can magically think or execute your way to success. You can’t. If success comes (and no guarantee it will), it’s only one way: constant hard work. Holding a mirror of self-criticism at all times. Pulling yourself out of the maze, up to the mountain top, gazing down at reality and seeing it for all its beautiful and harsh truth.
This is the story before 0. It’s the cost of a dream. And if this post sounds hard, well, it is. But there’s good news too. When you’re in the idea maze, there’s only one thing to do: keep moving. Take one step, then another. Hit a wall? Turn. Find a chasm? Turn. Just keep moving.
The only way out is through.