No Hiding

The 2019 Rugby World Cup is underway in Japan as I write this and watching the matches on TV brings back fond memories of my time at business school. One advantage of going to a full-time MBA program is that it affords you the time to pursue adventures that you might not normally take on when working 50+ hours a week. One such adventure for me was playing for the Wharton Wharthog rugby club.

Now for absolute clarity, I had never played any sort of football or rugby prior to Wharton, nor was I genetically predisposed to do so. Solidly in our late twenties at the time, my teammates and I were not the youthful undergrads we were in our minds when we took the pitch. What we may have lacked in skills and ultimately wins, however, was more than made up for in the personal growth of trying something new and the camaraderie that comes from competing against business school clubs from around the U.S. and abroad.

What I love about trying different things is that you find life lessons that you bring back to your current reality. One of the concepts I have brought back from my brief time playing rugby is the concept of 'no hiding'. It goes like this.

In the latter stages of a match when you are in a ruck (see above), it is really easy - and understandable - to hang out and catch your breath after the relentless running and tackling while people slowly pile off of you. This is called 'hiding' and our peer coaches at the time would always yell at us during practice "No hiding!". We were of no value to our team if we were in that pile of bodies. They were training us to force our way out of the ruck and to get back into the game that had now progressed.

When people ask me why I pursued an entrepreneurial career in the early stage tech sector, I find myself regularly referencing the 'no hiding' maxim.

In the corporate world where I started by career, it quickly became evident that I was not on the work equivalent of the efficient frontier curve. The success of the business was not correlated to my work effort. My output was buried within the organizational structure, with only my values and ambition driving me to give 100% most days.

With entrepreneurship, however, there is no place to hide. Entrepreneurs must live in the stark light of day where their abilities are being tested by dynamic market forces, demanding customers and fierce competition.

Entrepreneurs live (and die) on that efficient frontier. The decisions they make and the effort they put in will be reflected in business outcomes. If they get outworked or outsmarted, the results will show over time. They can't hide.

Not surprisingly, this can be an overwhelming feeling. The constant belief that your survival is at stake each and every day can wear down the toughest of souls. At the same time, however, there is no greater place to feel alive than in the equivalent of Theodore Roosevelt's arena.

So this post is to celebrate the entrepreneurs out there, in whatever form they may take. Thank you for having the courage and fortitude to hang out your shingle or pursue your idea. Thank you for not hiding. And thank you to the families, employees, customers and investors who support them. Entrepreneurs are a rare breed and deserve to be recognized as such. The world is a better place because of each one of them.

Now let's shoot the boot!