Ignore Your Intuition
6 Counterintuitive Things in Entrepreneurship
Hello, startup founders!
You’ve set out to build something new with an unknown outcome. I think that’s one of the coolest things you can do in life — creating something from nothing to have a positive impact on humanity.
There’s something you should know — there are lots of times when you’re getting started where you’ll be best served by ignoring your intuition. A less clickbait-y way of saying that: there are a number of counterintuitive things that you should watch out for. Here are 6 of them.
Let’s hear what your intuition makes you think, and then why it’s wrong and you should ignore it…
- I need to figure out what I’m doing first and then I can start. I’m not sure where I’m even going, so I’ve got to make a plan, and then I’ll be ready to go.
Don’t wait and over-plan. Take action now.
Learn in motion. That’s the best way to achieve your goal. You’d be shocked by how many people never start. Humans are wired to resist change. That helps keep us safe, but it also keeps us from growing. Growth feels uncomfortable. But you signed up for the thrill of the unknown, not the safety of the well-trodden path, right? It’s going to be worth it.
2. I’m going to choose a path, focus on it, and not abandon it. That would be giving up and I am not a quitter. I don’t have time to try out every path, so I’ll choose just one for now and see if it’s the right one.
Don’t pick one direction. Test out lots of different directions.
Your path ahead is unclear. If you choose only one path, you risk choosing the wrong one. If you go all the way down the wrong path and then have to start over, it will take much longer than testing out a bunch of different paths at first to find the right one. Founder/investor Chris Dixon wrote about a classic computer science problem which proves that this strategy is the fastest way to climb to the top of the tallest hill.
3. I need to hurry up and find the answer to all the biggest problems I’m solving. If I can figure it out, I’ll earn huge rewards. And if I’m too slow, someone else might find the answer first.
Don’t look for the right answers. Look for the right questions.
Einstein once said, “if I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” He was pretty smart. Remember that you’re in uncharted territory. The questions you ask will guide your way, whether that’s toward ruin or revelation. Answers are closed doors, questions are open doors. It’s worth it to take the time to consider which doors to go through.
4. I’m really strong at X, so I’ll start by doing a great job at that. That’s the fastest way for me to build the right thing.
Don’t default to doing what you’re good at. Do the most important thing.
Sometimes what you’re best at is exactly the wrong thing to do first. For a moment, put your strengths aside and consider this: what is the most impactful work you can do to ensure that you succeed? You’d think that being good at a bunch of things would lessen this problem, but it actually makes things worse. For example, if you’re a designer/developer, you could spend 6 months building an app by yourself only to find out that no one wants it. Ouch. You could have tested out the demand first and saved yourself 6 months and the pain of throwing away your hard work.
5. I need to work super hard and super fast — that’s what founders do, right? Days, nights, and weekends. Eat, sleep, and breathe my startup. That’s how I’ll get ahead and win out over my competition.
Don’t do the most work quickly. Do the least work to learn quickly.
When facing the unknown, learning is what you’re looking to achieve. Minimize the work you do to maximize your speed of learning. This strategy was the true legacy of Eric Ries’ Lean Startup. Remember the example above about the designer/developer who spent 6 months building something not enough people wanted? What if they had published a landing page with a signup button to gauge interest before building anything?
6. I want this thing to be really, really big (that’s what VCs want, right?), so I need to think about making things efficient and only do things that can scale up to serve billions of customers.
Don’t worry about scaling. Do things that don’t scale.
This is great advice that Paul Graham, Co-founder of Y Combinator, gives to founders. Most of the time you won’t need to scale. And if you do and face problems, those are good problems to have. I remember my friend, who was the first engineer at Pinterest, stressing out over server meltdowns due to a crushing amount of traffic that preceded cranky user complaints about downtime. Twitter struggled so much to scale that their server error page illustration became famous — the Fail Whale. Things turned out ok for those companies. But also, doing high-touch things is one of your advantages over larger, more established companies, and one of the best ways to learn about your customers.
There are, of course, times where listening to your intuition will serve you well. If you get bad vibes from someone you’re considering as a co-founder, trust yourself and keep looking. If you feel like some growth hack crosses the line into unethical behavior, take note and decide if the potential negative long-term impact is worth the short-term gain. It’s best to make decisions quickly and then correct course if needed, and your intuition, combined with input from your team and customers, makes a great guide.
But, keep an eye out for moments when your intuition leads you astray. That’s when you can ignore it and go in a different direction — the one that leads to success.
P.S. That designer/developer founder was me. I spent closer to a year building something instead of recruiting a co-founder, investors, or enough customers. I’ll never do that again, and I hope you can avoid these traps.
