The Art of Value Creation

I have a friend who is a writer. For the better part of the last 10 years, I've introduced him to people as "A journalist who is working on a Novel". Honestly, I haven't read any chapters of the Novel, and he has over the last ten years made a series of difficult decisions to remain a journalist because it keeps him on the path towards publishing that Novel.

We had one of those heart to heart conversations a few weeks back, where I asked him, as a writer where is his body of work.

Apart from the articles that he has written for the close to half a dozen media organizations he has worked for, he doesn't have much to show for. And I keep reminding him, that the life time of even the best newspaper on the planet is only for a day.

This isn't anything new.

Most of us get into this trap where we want to do something great - but we want to go from 0 to 100 in 3.2 seconds. Nothing less would do.

But on the other hand, every successful artist or entrepreneur has had a series of work that embodies their thought process, each piece where they perfected a technique or tried something new, that in amalgamation makes up that masterpiece that arrives later.

I understand that you want to build a cathedral, but you'd atleast have to start with a gazebo.

I've always been fascinated by entrepreneurship, because it is and will be the sustainable way to create impact on society. Governments and social welfare schemes play a huge part in building the safety net, but entrepreneurship and innovation moves society forward.

But as of late, it has all become about who can tell the best stories and get on the ponzi scheme of "topi-investing" till the greater fool is found.

The average age of a company when it became part of the Fortune 500 list is 43 years. The Average lifetime of a startup is around 6.5 years (and the fact that most funds are around 7 years, is no coincidence).

While building a hot startup, building a unicorn, and the thrill of racing it to the top can be exhilarating, it is also very short lived. Zynga was once one of the hottest startup in the world - and today very few people even remember it, let alone their story.

So the question I ask entrepreneurs often is, what drives them. Is it lasting impact? or are we just chasing the money train. Because if it is the latter, we are not adding value to the world.

And the art of creating value and capturing it takes time. And just as a writer hones her skill towards writing that great novel, an entrepreneur has to learn the art of building a team, building a product, scaling a product, selling, selling at scale, financing a startup, building kickass customer support - and every single bit of this matters to building a company that stands the test of time and continues to create value.

So if you are an entrepreneur, stop for a second and ask yourself. Where is your body of work, where you have proven to yourself each element of building a startup that is remarkable - cause trust me, once you put your hand on the reins of that wild stallion whipped by the might of venture capital, your startup will outrun you even before you blink - and then it turns into a different game of wanting to stay on the horse that you aren't fit to ride, while the board tries to oust you and that's half the problem of the venture capital world today.

Value creation is an art form. Master it. And that takes time. Everything else is just drama.