How to bring vision back to your sophomore startup

“None of the VCs seem interested in our business despite the fact that we did millions last year,” the portfolio company lamented.

“Hmm….” I nodded my head and furrowed my brow, considering the dissonance.

“I don’t want to be a bullshit artist and lie, but ... we have a simple business that probably won’t be the next Uber …” he protested.

“Why can’t you be the next Uber?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t want to lie … But I do have some ideas. I just don’t know if they’re going to work,” he explained.

“No one knows if any of this is going to work -- that’s the point! Tell me the big ideas!!” I exclaimed!

[ Click to Tweet (can edit before sending): https://ctt.ec/0i2u6 ]

The founder in this case stopped trying to think big because he was so obsessed with making his initial vision work. While it’s important to execute, you have to be careful not to give up dreaming big.

Getting out of the weeds

Our job as founders of venture-backed businesses is to build big, audacious things. Of course, when we are at work, we have to take very small steps. Most days it doesn’t feel like you’re building the big audacious thing.

How can it feel like a grand vision when you’re hiring sales people, doing press releases, and dealing with your developers debating all sides of the work-from-home policy?

A founder’s life tends to suck most days. The best you can do is go through the brutally slow progress with good cheer and a sense of purpose.

Many founders get so caught up in the day-to-day of their business they forget why we’re here: to try big things!

The worst thing that can happen to many startups is they quickly get to a $50,000 in monthly revenue and then find out that the business doesn’t scale -- or perhaps it scales slowly. Now they have to figure out what to do with this $600,000 per year business that they spent a year building, and that simply isn’t going to get everyone the outcome they want.

It sucks to unplug something working, and no one knows for sure if that “dead end” business is just one or two tweaks away from exploding. There are countless examples of unexpected wins that magically show up at a company -- App installs for Facebook comes to mind. Remember a couple of years back when Facebook’s ads were flat and everyone was dumping the stock? Yeah, no one does -- because they figured out mobile ads!

How to bring vision back to your sophomore startup

I like to step back from my business every couple of months and ask this question:

“Knowing what I know now, what would my strategy be if I were forced to start over tomorrow?”

Write all your ideas down and debate the ideas with individuals you trust. Give them the disclaimer, “Was thinking about my business, and while we’ve achieved X, Y and Z, I think if I were given the chance to start over I would just focus 100% on X because of A, B, and C. What do you think of that logic?”

In most cases you’re going to have figured out something profound, and you’ll be glad you did. It might not give you a clear path but it might tell you where to generally look for a solution.

I find myself doing this with founders more and more often: “Oh, we’re having a hard time making X work? I see a lot of folks having success with Twitter ads for Y and YouTube pre-roll ads for Z. You might want to talk to A, B, and C about their experience.” It’s not an exact place to find the fish, but more like the fish are biting in that general area over yonder.

A second way to get some fresh eyes and vision on your startup is to go to founders you respect and ask the following question:

“Here is what we’ve accomplished and learned. If you were forced to run my company what would you do to grow it?”

After asking this question you’re going to get a ton of different ideas. Some will suck and one might be brilliant. Your job is to ask enough super qualified people to get an idea of what might result in the biggest outcome for you and your team.

If you ask five people and get five different ideas, that tells you something valuable as well: there might be a lot of different ways to go about scaling this business. Or, maybe no one can figure it out. This stuff is hard, that’s why you’re reading this blog (and why I’m writing it): to try and get answers.

In summary

The important thing is that when you meet with VCs you have some big, audacious ideas you want to try.

It is completely fine to go to a VC and say: “We are at $1m in revenue and have customers who love us. We see three ways for us to grow revenue much faster: X, Y, and Z. We are raising money to test those ideas and then figure out which to pursue hard.”

If you present your business as small, you can’t expect the people who want to go big to join you on your adventure. If you want to get the big money you have to be willing to think big.

[ Note: none of this means you should be reckless and act like a drunken sailor who just got to port and can’t wait to spend all their money as fast as possible. The point here is that you must never stop thinking big. ]

best @jason

PS - Speaking of thinking big, this week on TWIST I hosted two amazing minds for the news roundtable: Adam Nash, CEO of Wealthfront, and David Ulevitch, CEO of OpenDNS. We get into the SONY hack, its security implications industry-wide, the changing of certain CEO guards, the great unbundling in media, finance and other sectors, and a whole lot more. Watch here.