Are You Ready to Commit to Founding?

Launching a startup is a big commitment in terms of time, resources, and energy. Before you leap, are you ready for that sort of commitment?

Reality check:  Most startups fail.

The entrepreneurial stories you see written and the tales you hear told often gloss over or leave out the darker days and the long slogs in favor of highlighting the milestones achieved and the challenges conquered. No one really wants to share their many mistakes, rejections, and defeats. Nor do they want to remember and discuss how often they struggled, despaired, and slogged. This human reality means that we can easily develop a skewed perception of what it is like to be an entrepreneur and how likely we are to succeed. To put it in perspective, remember that only a tiny percentage of startups that try succeed in raising venture capital – and many of those venture-back companies end up failing anyway.

Often, a founding team runs out of money and energy before the opportunity coalesces and takes off, leading to a failed startup. For founders, going into the endeavor with eyes wide open is essential. Give yourself some limits up front on how much time and personal money you are willing to risk on your idea – and, if you have one, make sure your spouse is bought into that commitment as well.

That’s the downside risk, but there is an upside commitment as well.

Creating large-scale, durable value in a company takes time and immense effort. A successful high-potential startup journey for a founder is often a decade or more. The fast flip is highly unusual. Consider that launching a startup, especially a wildly successful one, will take longer than you expect and demand more resources than you imagine before you embark on the adventure. You will only have time for a few shots on goal, perhaps only one shot. Is this your best shot?

It may seem counterintuitive to talk about the costs of success. However, those with the tenacity, creativity, and drive to tackle founding a company will likely find that simply walking away is not an easy option. When the going gets tough, investors, employees, and customers will all look to the founder(s) to find a way. That problem-solving passion that got the founder started down this path in the first place kicks in as they try to find a way out of whatever snarl they find themselves in.

So, be mindful that once you start, it can be difficult to stop. Therefore, consider the substantial costs of the entrepreneurial path before you embark upon it. Sometimes, the only way to solve the burning problem staring you in the face is to go out and build that innovative solution and share it with the world yourself. The rewards of doing so – creativity, autonomy, impact, and wealth – are potentially substantial, but success is always uncertain, and the road is rarely easy. Are you prepared to go the distance?