Don't Intimidate Yourself Show No Fear! by Jack Krupansky Despite all the external factors which influence success, I've found internal factors to be a bigger impediment to success. As troublesome as competition and the market can be, they are only as much trouble as you let them be. It is your approach to these challenges that makes the difference. Too many times I have been talking with someone and one of us laments the unfairness of the success of Microsoft, Borland, Apple, etc. One of us says "I could have done that" or "I could have done that better." But we didn't. Nobody stopped us, we stopped ourselves. We intimidated ourselves into leaving markets to others. I can look back at a number of times when opportunities existed that I did not fully exploit. There was always a long list of "good" reasons for staying out of the market, going slow, or just not focusing intensely enough to develop a killer product. There were the first personal computers, the Apple II, the IBM PC, the Macintosh, Windows, Windows NT, Windows 95, the Internet/Web, objects, virtual reality, multimedia games, and more. The "good" reasons for not moving forward more aggressively usually make lots of sense from a purely technical or abstract point of view. But unless tempered by a healthy dose of entrepreneurial energy it is far too easy to get bogged down in details. Here are a few of my "favorite" reasons for demotivating myself and failing to exploit opportunities. I Might Be Wrong Whether your ideas are wrong or not is no excuse for holding back. Reality will be a better judge than your internal fears. The logic of your concerns may be flawed and your worst fears may be insignificant. Besides, even if you are wrong it may still be possible to make some corrections and turn around and succeed anyway. Finding Out I'm Wrong Or maybe your fears are right and you are confronted by real problems. Even that shouldn't stop us. Sometimes we are so consumed with the details under our control that we have little time, energy, or patience to give proper attention to new issues that pop up. That lack of reserve energy results in a knee-jerk response that rarely reflects our true capabilities. So we need a contingency plan for dealing with unforeseen problems. You need to give yourself a little room to carefully consider the new issue and give it a thoughtful response. You rarely need to drop everything for every new problem that crops up. Once you've made a commitment to a project you have a strong incentive to solve problems. But when a project is still at the idea stage it is very easy to end up dropping it rather than work through the problems. Knowing My Idea Has Problems Any complex idea will have lots of difficulties to resolve. While you want to be express confidence in being able to solve all the issues you also need to have a "feel" for how nasty the issues are. It's too easy to get very depressed by the sum of the problems and either go slower or maybe even abandon an idea. Insurmountable Problems Sometimes you look at the issues and "decide" the situation really is hopeless. It may be tempting to give up, but this is when a real entrepreneur earns their keep. A different angle of attack might allow you to see more clearly how to surmount the obstacle. Or maybe there are a few chinks or crevices in the "wall" that you can exploit. It Seems Too Hard At first glance a problem may seem insoluble, but on closer inspection we can begin to see opportunities to exploit. If a problem seems too hard, that usually means I'm just not (yet) really motivated to take it on. Lack of Knowledge The unknown can be very intimidating, especially for techies that thrive on detail and planning. You're not sure exactly which direction to go, what angle to approach from, or how fast to move in. Fear of the unknown is quite natural, but it must be overcome. A good entrepreneur thrives on the unknown and exploits it fully. They move in rapidly when others move too cautiously. Too Much Knowledge If your analytic abilities are really good you can see all sorts of problems that your rational mind will tell you to worry about. Less able competitors will either not see all the problems, not rate them as severely, or decide to ignore them. For the entrepreneur, it's not what you see but how you deal with it. An engineer will prefer a slow approach around the potholes while the entrepreneur goes straight on and not only gets further faster, but thrills from the bumpy ride. Someone Else Must Already be Doing It I don't know how many times I have been discussing some idea with someone and one of says that it is so obvious that someone must be doing it. We're sometimes right, but not always. It's senseless to so cavalierly eliminate opportunities. Someone else may have started attacking a market, but will they succeed or will they finish before you? Too many indeterminate questions. So don't use this as a filter for your ideas. Lack of Moral Support It may seem desirable to have all your friends, associates, and loved ones giving you great encouragement and it's easy to get discouraged if you don't have that support. They may give your venture lip service or may tell you outright that you're doomed to failure and must be crazy to think you have any chance. But you should do what you need to do regardless of the level of external support. The only external support you really need is the long-term support of the market. And you will get tons of support when you start becoming successful. You should also be wary of overly enthusiastic support that focuses on perceptions of what your success might eventually be rather than on a realistic assessment of the market reality. Lack of a Team When you're working as part of a good team you know you can depend on others to do their part and even help you out when you need it. And when something goes wrong there is always someone else who could be blamed. When you're on your own you don't have any of that. But I never worked on any ideal teams and was always frustrated by "team" members not doing their jobs (which I then had to cover for) and their rarely being able to help me out. Now I revel in by independence and total acceptance of absolute responsibility. But when I look at a new market opportunity I frequently find myself saying that a "real" team would be needed to pull it off. Too Much for Me to do Alone A good engineer looks at a problem and tries to discover all the possible issues that will need to be resolved to solve the problem. But that presumes a clear problem statement as a starting point. It may be that only a small subset of the problem need be attacked, at least initially. It is the role of the entrepreneur to whittle down the problem to a manageable size and phase it so that it can be tacked by the smallest possible team (preferably a single person.) Lack of a Ready Market It's nice to have a well-defined list of potential customers and even some commitments to buy before you start developing your product, but don't let a lack of that stop you. Use your gut feel. Ask yourself hard questions and run your ideas against the cynics and naysayers to make sure that you feel strongly about your ideas in the face of criticism. Then go for it. Be prepared for total failure. Be prepared to change your plans on a moment's notice. But don't insist that your success be guaranteed before setting off on your venture. Market Research A thick market study can give you a false sense of confidence or falsely destroy your confidence. The study may be flawed, incomplete, outdated, or maybe just not relevant to your ultimate market. It may overestimate the threat to your venture. And it may underestimate potential threats that could wipe you out. Use any studies as raw, input and make your own gut-feel judgments. Lack of Market Research You can feel pretty intimidated by not having a formal market study to lean on. Don't let that slow you down. Do some reading and talk to some people. Then use your entrepreneurial, gut-feel to make a judgment which will probably serve you as well as a thick study. Lack of a Fancy Business Plan A big, thick, bound business plan may "look" impressive, but a simple one-page summary can have more real substance and stand a better chance of surviving an evolving and competitive market. The thickness of the big plan may be devoted more to explaining a weak strategy than to defining the few key elements that will make a successful plan work. What the Competition Says You hear or read something from a competitor and it sounds ominous. But don't act on it too quickly. Your interpretation of what they say may be radically different from reality. They may be shading the truth. They may be talking about future plans (AKA vaporware) rather than what's shipping. And it might just be an outright lie (sometimes called misinformation.) More commonly it may just be a claim from someone who doesn't really understand what they're talking about and who doesn't understand the problems with their claims. It is also very easy to misinterpret any marketing claim. If you fear the worst, you start seeing the worst in everything. What initially sounds like an insurmountable mountain may really be no more than an easily climbed hill or possibly even a diversionary tactic. Things You Read It's very easy to terribly frighten yourself by reading something in a trade publication. Writers and columnists usually are much less knowledgeable than you. They may have more immediate access to trade gossip, but that's not a good basis for business decisions. Don't get all worked up and worried by what you read. Treat it as input with a low signal to noise ratio. Filter it carefully and heavily. The facts may be wrong, they may be misrepresented, or you may be reading too much between the lines. Like a good reporter, you should always check the facts even if they were written by someone who should've already checked them. Their criteria for validity is probably much lower than your needs. Potential Competition We have to estimate who will be the competition in the future. This estimate might be very frightening. But be careful about scaring your with something that is not yet real and may never even come to pass. The goal is to understand who might become a competitor and at least ruminate as to how you would respond to that threat. You may be much better off to then set aside that analysis and proceed without it. You can come back to it if needed. But don't let it slow you down or deter you from being the first to enter a new market. Even if the big players decide to move in later, they may want to buy you out to gain your experience. And even if they do eventually move in and push you aside maybe they'll do it on such a slow time scale that you have plenty of time to accumulate a nice nest egg. Confident Experts Everyone else seems so confident. Analysts, competitors, experts, and critics all exude confidence. It's easy to be cowed by this confidence, but still not appropriate. Don't substitute faith in someone else's confidence for your own critical eye and gut feel. The boundary between confidence and energetic over-confidence is sometimes hard to discern, but you can be sure that your critics don't worry too much about the distinction. The experts make it all sound so obvious and clear. And they can explain so well why your concept is horribly flawed and hopelessly doomed. They sound confident and have great pseudo-reasoning. A lot of people, even supposedly rational engineers, are frequently befuddled when faced with slick expert-talk. Just use your own brain and pick through their confidence for whatever facts may actually be there. When predicting the future, anyone can appear confident. Just because you do not feel as confident as the expert sounds does not mean that your future view is less correct. Trends Analysts are always trying to spot trends. But just because they claim to see a trend does not mean that everyone must or will follow that trend. Just a couple of years ago it sounded as if the keyboard was going to go the way of the buggy whip as handwriting recognition was being touted as a wonder technology. But now that trend has subsided. Use your rational mind and pick and choice the facts from the market to develop your own view of what the trends are going to be. Don't let the analysts drive your thinking. It's Too Early With a new technology or undeveloped market it is easy to be scared away by the uncertainty of a vacuum and how it will later be filled. It's too easy to say to yourself that it'll be better to see how the market develops before staking your claim. But by then the best territory will already be taken. Those early birds also get the opportunity to establish de facto standards that you get forced to follow. It's Too Late On the other hand, even a mature market can be ripe for an alternative approach. There are times when it's okay to ignore conventional wisdom and look instead to hidden opportunity. Maybe everybody has bought existing products, but then again maybe a lot of them are unhappy and ready to consider an alternative. Or maybe you have a special angle or there are gaps in current products. Before Its Too Late Occasionally you see a "hot" opportunity with lots of people rushing in to stake their claim and you may want to rush in "before it's too late." Avoid the mob mentality and go in only if it really makes sense to you. The Internet is a perfect example. Don't waste your time on it unless you have a really solid, compelling application for it. It may already be too late (if you want to do a new browser), or may actually be too early (to do real, commercial quality applications), but it's very unlikely that you need to rush in right now "before it's too late." My Own Shortcomings and Limits We all have a variety of shortcomings and limitations. Sometimes we try a little too hard to work around them and treats our "limits" like solid walls. We limit ourselves more than the real-world itself does. That's crazy. We should instead push our limits and overcome our shortcomings. If you feel uncomfortable doing marketing and think you need to let the experts do it, guess again and intensify your effort to learn how to do it yourself. Too Little Faith in My Own Abilities We each have skills that we have not yet used. It may seem that it will take to long to develop those skills, but if you're really motivated (like any good entrepreneur should be), skill development is usually very rapid because your survival depends on it. I Don't Have the Right Skills I sometimes have come up with a great idea but then dropped it because I didn't have the "right" set of skills to pull it off. Even though I know that I can quickly learn almost anything I frequently held back. Avoiding the Spotlight If I really liked being in the spotlight then I'd have gone in to acting or politics or marketing long ago. Attention can be very intimidating. Sometimes we pick an opportunity based on being able to complete our tasks with a minimum of attention. But that eliminates far too many opportunities. Maybe you do want to avoid attention, or maybe like me, you just aren't yet comfortable enough with it to stride out into it in bold confidence. Maybe it just takes time, but more likely you just have to do it. I'm Too Comfortable Now For all its allure, a new venture can look too shaky compared to your current situation. Or worse, you may actually be relatively happy with your current state of affairs. But if you really look out in time you'll see how tenuous your current situation really is. Continuing you current business may be much more risky than embarking on a new one. It's wise to periodically schedule a review of this question. I know from firsthand experience that this is definitely a strong demotivater for many potential ventures. Lack of Money Somehow it seems that lots of venture capital is needed to start a significant business. But companies like Microsoft and Apple started with almost nothing. Money just isn't the issue. In fact, if you have a really hot idea, the big money will come knocking at your door. The hard part is being disciplined enough to turn it away until and if you are really ready for it. Limited State of the Art Your great idea may require technology that does not yet exist. That means you can't create it off the shelf. But you can always try to advance the state of the art on your own. It may turn out that developing the underlying technology can be a bigger business than the application you intended the technology for. Don't Know How To Proceed You've identified an opportunity but don't yet have a plan for how to achieve success. A lot of people take that as a sign that you should hold up and wait till the plan firms up. But it is just as likely that forging ahead on your gut feel will cause a lot of the details to shake loose and the plan may naturally fall into place. Forward motion is a better strategy than waiting for divine intervention. Compatibility and Standards It May appear very difficult to make your new product compatible with existing products or standards. But you may have options other than developing a 100% compatible product. Maybe you can license the compatible features or do a subset of the full product. Maybe someone with an existing compatible product would be interested in licensing your product/technology. There are always options. Newer Technology Just when you've got your plans in place some new technology comes along. You hate to go with the old technology, but you don't want to scrap your plans. But there's always something new coming. Don't put things aside and wait. Pursue your plan more vigorously, get the product out there earning money. Occasionally the new technology really will be a radical advance, but if you are a sharp entrepreneur, you'll be able to tell the difference and make the switch when it really is needed. Better Ideas You thought your idea was the best and all of a sudden you or someone you know comes up with a better idea. The new idea is so appealing. But you'll always be coming up with better ideas. Treat ideas the same as technology. At some point you just have to draw a line and say here's what I'm going with. An Approach Now when I look at a problem I have a number of "standard" responses. Show no fear, be extremely observant, remain calmly unperturbed, and wait a small amount of time to let your initial emotional response die off. Let your mind do a quick seat-of-the-pants analysis of the situation and quickly decide whether any response needs to occur this week, this month, or even this year. Delay your response until it makes sense, but act on your response promptly when its time comes. This approach can be used both for both addressing problems that crop up with an existing product and for new products or markets. Conclusions As the pressure builds, look inside yourself for solutions to problems and issues before you point to all the external reasons for your troubles. An entrepreneurial engineer combines the sane, rational mind of an engineer with the energy and perseverance of a bold (even reckless) entrepreneur. Watch where you're going, but when faced with a problem push forward with greater resolve. A rational mind is the best tool for dealing with irrational fears. Keep your head and combine that with energy and shrewd risks and you'll be unstoppable. ------ Jack Krupansky runs a one person software business, Base Technology, which develops and markets the Liana object-oriented programming language and C-odeScript scripting language interpreter and offers Windows software development consulting. He may be reached at 800-786-9505, e-mail at jack@basetechnology.com, or on the web at http://www.basetechnology.com.