Tonight, I thought I use other people’s blogs to talk about Entrepreneurship.
Overnight success?
“No one ever pitches their new product idea by saying ‘this is going to take time, hard work, and a willingness to adjust our plan as we experiment and learn more about this market’.
It’s just not sexy!
The challenge for observers, investors and partners…is to avoid the temptation of buying the media infatuation with the overnight success story (which rarely happens overnight). The challenge for marketers is to figure out what daily progress looks like and obsess about that. The goal, I think, is to be an overnight failure, but one that persists. Keeping costs low, building a foundation that leads to the right kind of story, the right kind of organic growth.”
– Blog by Seth Godin (Seth Godin has written thirteen books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. American Way Magazine calls him, “America’s Greatest Marketer,” and his blog is perhaps the most popular in the world written by a single individual.)
Not So Overnight Success of FedEx
“Frederick W. Smith, founder of FedEx Corp. (FDX ), has transportation in his blood. With $4 million inherited from his father and $80 million from venture capitalists, he set up Federal Express Corp. in 1971.
Ready to launch the service from Memphis on Mar. 12, 1973, Smith secured just seven packages for the first night’s run. He sent his salesmen back into the field, more than doubled his network to 25 cities, and relaunched the service a month later — this time handling a grand total of 186 packages.
Sparse initial volume wasn’t the only headache. Until the late ’70s, the postal monopoly stopped FedEx from delivering documents. Onerous airline regulations at first restricted it to flying tiny Falcon jets. By 1973, Smith was so desperate for cash that he flew to Las Vegas to play the blackjack tables. He wired the $27,000 he won back to FedEx.
Although FedEx has spawned numerous competitors, it is still the biggest operator. And all because a college kid could see a market that others couldn’t.”
The Myth of Angry Birds’ Overnight Success
“Angry Birds was Rovio’s 52nd game. They spent eight years and almost went bankrupt before finally creating their massive hit. Pinterest is one of the fastest growing websites in history, but struggled for a long time. Pinterest’s CEO recently said that they had “catastrophically small numbers” in their first year after launch, and that if he had listened to popular startup advice he probably would have quit.
You tend to hear about startups when they are successful but not when they are struggling. This creates a systematically distorted perception that companies succeed overnight. Almost always, when you learn the backstory, you find that behind every “overnight success” is a story of entrepreneurs toiling away for years, with very few people except themselves and perhaps a few friends, users, and investors supporting them.
Startups are hard, but they can also go from difficult to great incredibly quickly. You just need to survive long enough and keep going so you can create your 52nd game.”
– Blog by Chris Dixon, Co-founder/CEO of Hunch (acquired by eBay).
