For my Thanksgiving blog I am giving thanks for entrepreneurs’ endeavors to create something tangible and great starting from mere ideas.  Many compelling stories about well-known, highly regarded companies—Zappos, Southwest, Chipotle, CarMax, and Apple, to name a few—center on the opportunities, complexities and risks inherent in entrepreneurship.  These ventures navigated the hurdles of early stage company and capital formation, scaled up, achieved exceptional customer and brand loyalty.  Their narratives bring to mind useful frameworks for how we view the gold standard for innovation, creativity, product design, management and profitable growth.  Further, there are lessons about sustainable excellence in company culture, strategy and all facets of leadership.  

Right alongside the success stories, I believe there are just as many insights gained in listening to how entrepreneurs have dealt with setbacks.  I’ve been struck by a composite of the situations in which most founders find themselves during initial years of a venture.  Typically it is very difficult getting a new company off the ground, with every capital round/raise bringing its own set of challenges.  In most cases the startup has no existing infrastructure, proof of concept, consumer base, brand equity, team, or investor traction.  All of that needs to be built.  From scratch.  Think about it… this is largely the opposite of how most people spend their working lives; and take jobs at companies, join a department/ existing management, and focus in a functional area.  No strict formula exists yet for ensuring startup success, and oftentimes the reverse seems the case.  Anecdotes shared by founders about how decisions came about to start companies imply an alchemy of good timing, ideas, and team formation, and unmet market needs, bootstrapped funding and luck.  There may be other considerations as well such as operational, execution, technical and financing risks.  Overall, things rarely seem to go exactly according to (business) plan.  Macro-economic conditions also matter, along with investment climate and investors’ mindset around risking capital to fund new ideas and ventures. 

I think it is also interesting to touch on the ways that entrepreneurs stay motivated in the face of uncertainty and possible failure.  To do so, individual skills and abilities seem to evolve, and consequently teams improve and adapt towards reaching a goal.  Talk to enough entrepreneurs and their resilience, problem solving, determination, vision and optimism—qualities that ideally hold up and endure, may duly impress you.  It is likewise important to develop and iterate products, or even companies, in order to remain competitive and relevant in changing markets and industries.  And finally, I’ve found a few common threads among entrepreneurs who have known both success and failure—attributes like unrelenting confidence; high comfort with uncertainty; vision for great things with upside value when skeptics purport otherwise; and an ability to bounce back after mistakes.  Networking can make a positive impact, as evidenced in leading organizations and advisors at the forefront of supporting founders and providing key resources (85 Broads, 500 Startups, Udemy).  So, thanks to all the entrepreneurs who share their time and advice.  Let’s pay it forward and think about the work world through a different lens or trade some interesting experiences that resonate with building strong teams and organizations.  Thanks for reading.  Enjoy the holiday season, and Livestrong!