Socrates, as a Startup Founder

Today's theme is a simple concept that I've found hard to master.

Let me start by telling you how the idea for this post even came up:

I got a text earlier in the week from my eldest daughter that read something like this:

" I have an assignment in school that relates to Ancient Greece, and I thought since you're quoting Socrates and Plato every second day, you can help me out."

Besides feeling happy for the ask, I started thinking about how often I talk about Socrates.

And then it struck me:

One of the core principles that we have been implementing has to do with the most famous quote attributed to Socrates.

" All I know is that I know nothing"

Let me explain:

As founders, we operate on assumptions, bias, and untested theories.

Even when few will admit it, when you ask them, what we are working on is an IDEA.

All great companies started with an IDEA; yes, what most people won't tell you is that the original idea changes A LOT between its conception and the peak of the company's success.

Admitting, primarily to yourself, that you DON'T KNOW if what you're building will work, grow or scale in its current form is a big step towards constant improvement.

We have been thinking about the above quote a lot while building our two companies.

We don't know anything works until we try it.

And that leads to trying many things.

Like Many MANY things.

At the end of the day, the only proof is social and monetary. Nothing else really matters.

That leads to many ideas, a few quite hilarious.

Like building a solution presentation in the form of a murder investigation - if you don't believe me, you can find the video here.)

That mindset allowed us to disqualify many things by having the data points to do so.

On the flip side of this mentality, you also have unfounded optimism.

We don't exclude any possibility until we have proof.

My advice so far:

Approach EVERY problem agnostically. You don't know until you KNOW.

Test, test, test and then test some more.

Until you have something BAREABLE enough to go ask people to pay for.

Then, a whole new round of testing begins.

I'm an Advisor, Investor and CEO.

I write about Company Building, Revenue Operations and Enterprise sales.

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