The global economy is stagnant, regardless of what the headlines say. Be it China or the US, there is a limit to what these big-sized economies can do. Why the limit? When they actually do them, it is the politicians and the well-connected cronies to the politicians that actually gain the advantages first. This leaves private citizens to one powerful option: entrepreneurship.
But entrepreneurship is another word for “eating bitterness,” as President Xi Jin Ping of China once invariably recounted about his experiences during the Cultural Revolution when he was sent to the rural areas of China to till the farms and feed the pigs, often exposed to the harsh elements. Eric Ries, founder of IMVU, a company that specializes in producing computer avatars, had gone through the same. His solution?
When building a company, equate entrepreneurship with management. This is the central rule of preventing a start up from failing from the very beginning. As Einstein once said: “The difference between stupidity and genius is that the latter knows the limits.” Do not venture into things or areas which you cannot somehow control. Oftentimes, according to Eric Ries, the control came from tapping into the feedback of the customers. Just don’t experiment with them.
In other words, if you know your products are great but new, try not to introduce them in a rush, all with the aim to hear what customers say. Indeed, if they do come with feedback, immediately listen to them, and customize their expectations and feelings into the products. The goal, beyond making the customers feel good, lies with the science of entrepreneurship: every start up wants to connect with the client and customer immediately, with the aim of locking the relationship in, indeed, with the further aim of improving the overall quality of the customer experience . Put differently, you want to take the customers ever higher, in terms of his or her experience with your products, at every phase.
Indeed, startups have traditionally been set up to fail first then succeed later. The later phase is where the weak ones have been winnowed out to allow the few to survive. In 1900-1908, there were close to 600 automobile startups alone after the introduction of Model T by Ford. All but a handful survived. The rest either self-destructed or morphed into different automobile businesses. Eric Ries argued that his company, too, went into this phase before, of having its errors and flaws picked apart.
But part of the key to surviving, then thriving, is to put an inordinate amount of attention on marketing, even accounting, budget, and the whole process of the company. You survive, and succeed, by “being paranoid,” as Alex Grove of Intel once said. Eric Ries, having learned from the product development process of Japan, believes in supply chain supervision, attention and discipline, what he calls, “steer,” and “lead.” This book was voted as one of the top 15 business books in the US.