Bnoopy über eine interessanre Analogie, die er aus der Gefangenschat eines amerikanischen Admirals im Vietnam Krieg auf Existenzgründungen bezieht:
You have to believe that your vision will come to pass. You“ve got to do everything you can to make it happen. But, you can never let your belief and faith cloud your confrontation with reality.
In the front of each notebook I write in, the first thing I put on the inside cover is „face reality“?. I write it to remind myself that many startups fail because they don“t take a true accounting of the facts of the market (usually because they“re never as good as you want them to be and it sucks to look them in the face). Most startups are long on faith and short on reality.
Entrepreneurs are wired for optimism. But, in Stockdale“s story, it was the optimists who died. Don“t forget to balance optimism with fact and belief with reality. If that can get someone through 8 years of torture, it certainly can get anyone through a startup.
Auf deutsch? Optimisten haben einen schweren Stand, da sie – und das kennt wohl ein jeder von uns – immer die Hoffung haben, dass es nächsten Monat besser wird. Und wenn es nicht nächster Monat ist, dann übernächsten Monat, usw….
They were the ones who said „we“re going to be out by Christmas“. And, Christmas would come and Christmas would go. Then they“d say, „We“re going to be out by Easter.“ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again.
Es reicht nicht aus, einfach nur optimistisch zu sein, sondern man muss sämtliche rosaroten Farbflecken im alltäglichen Doing aber auch Geschäftsmodell auswaschen. Mittlerweile bin ich auch kein Anhänger der Farbe Rosa 🙂
