If The Shoe Fits: Why Founders Should Embrace ‘Why’
by Miki Saxon
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.
Did you read Ryan’s Journal yesterday? One of the things he talks about it the importance of starting with ‘why’, instead of just rushing in.
I get it, ‘because I’ve always been a ‘why’ person.
Founders would do well to ask ‘why’ more often, as in “Why are we building/doing this?”
The importance of that particular ‘why’ is data-driven, which is important, since the tech world especially believes that everything important is data driven.
I can cite dozens of sources, but I’ll use data from CB Insights, since it’s a startup and it’s product is data.
Tackling problems that are interesting to solve rather than those that serve a market need was cited as the No. 1 reason for failure, noted in 42% of cases. Or, as Treehouse Logic said, “We had great technology, great data on shopping behavior, great reputation as a thought leader, great expertise, great advisors, etc, but what we didn’t have was technology or business model that solved a pain point in a scalable way.”
A lot of people don’t like asking ‘why’, because, more than most, it is an uncomfortable question.
It usually requires introspection and frequently doesn’t return the desired answer.
Founders don’t like the why question for the same reasons, especially when it interferes with their beloved vision, let alone their worldview.
There are two ways of internalizing that data.
The obvious: Not asking ‘why’ increases my chance of failing by 42%.
The less obvious: Asking ‘why’ increases my chances of succeeding 42%.
If you subscribe to the less obvious approach, or want to, the simplest was to implement it is to embrace the Lean Startup methodology
Doing so may mean abandoning your initial vision, or, at the least, tweaking it, which could bruise your ego, but the payoff is huge.
And the bruising should be easier to handle knowing that you got a 42% boost on the road to success.
Image credit: HikingArtist
