A Founder’s Reflection
Growth, learning, and perseverance in the pursuit of ambitious purposes
I thought about writing a “2024 reflections” piece. Ultimately I decided it would be more interesting to share one from one of our founders (with their permission, of course).
Starting any entrepreneurial venture is an inherently personal journey. If you’re doing it right, you’re growing as a person right alongside the growth of the enterprise. Talk about TAM, tech, and business models is fine, but if you can’t grow and learn as a (ideally low ego!) leader, you’ll never be able to achieve the success every bright-eyed seed stage founder seeks. It’s part of what we mean when we talk about “People Stage” investing.
Below is a gently redacted excerpt from one of our Also Capital portfolio companies’ 2024 reflection. The grit and perseverance from this founder is among the best I’ve seen in close to a decade investing and operating.
Hope it’s interesting to you all as you’re reflecting on 2024 and contemplating your own tough decisions and big moves in 2025 and beyond!
___________
[Published 1/1/2025]
“…As I look back at the two years between then and now, I recall some of the many physical, emotional, personal, and professional challenges along the way:
Our first co-founder leaving the company after six months
Being told “no” by over 100 investors
Getting a call from our first customer three months into their lease agreement to say they are going out of business and would need to cancel the lease
Terminating or demoting under-performers, including good friends, perhaps later than prudent
80-100 hour work-weeks to accomplish our goals and hit customer deadlines
Missing almost every customer delivery deadline anyway
Discovering problems with products in the field and learning in real-time how to coordinate remote service technicians to service them
Failed experiments like a business leasing model
Tearing my ACL and narrowly escaping surgery
Getting in a motorcycle accident and narrowly escaping death
Ending a 5-year relationship with a partner, despite trying hard together to make it work
Going through a 2nd painful break-up less than a year later, that I made worse by dragging out because I so strongly believed I could make it work
As I have reflected on these challenges and experiences since the infancy of [xxx], a pattern of sorts begins to emerge: I have a relentless optimism and perseverance that drives a willingness to keep giving pursuits and people more chances, and ultimately a core belief that if one keeps trying, relentlessly working at it, that success can and will eventually be won. A sometimes brute force type of approach.
In many ways, this core belief has served me well throughout my life and my career, and in fact, I think I owe my success to it. It's resulted in my accomplishing a large volume of successes across a generalized variety of domains.
But over the last couple years, I’ve also realized the importance of accepting what I cannot change, and letting go of what isn’t working; and I recognize a contradiction between this necessity and my core belief.
Let me phrase this observation another way—there are 2 competing forces at play:
Perseverance. Dedication. Commitment. Loyalty. Determination. Keep trying. Keep working at it. Get better. Do better. Improve.
Acceptance. Gracefully let go of what’s not working; of who’s not working. Fire fast. Move onto the next one. Next project. Next candidate. Next business model.
As 2024 comes to a close, I find myself contemplating how to reconcile these two competing forces. How does one decide when to accept that something or someone isn’t working and to try something different? Or when it’s worth continuing to try, continuing to keep working on it?
To some extent, I think answering this question is a life-long pursuit. But nevertheless, we must move forward, and my goal for 2025 is to address this fundamental balance with the following heuristic, which is also my commitment to you as my investors, friends, colleagues and employees:
I will continue to lead [xxx] and live my life with an exceptionally high level of perseverance; and, when something or someone isn’t working, I will communicate clearly, loudly, and early about my concerns.
Planning will be more diligently utilized from the beginning and throughout, with clear, measurable targets, and when those are not achieved, swift, decisive action will be taken.
There are too many situations that I have let linger on without swift rectification. Sometimes because a clear plan was not predetermined. This is about fit, about having actionable planning & measurable results, and about taking decisive action.
That is my promise to myself, and my promise to you all. Hold me accountable to it.