Despite all of this education, one thing remains relatively unchanged: The number of entrepreneurs that think that if they just have the right idea and turn into the right product, they will be skyrocketed to success like Facebook, Instagram or Dropbox. For some reason, this magical leap to success is a persistent delusion.
What’s the honest trajectory? There can only be one Mark Zuckerberg, and at last look he’s young and healthy. Can every startup skyrocket like Facebook or Square or Google? It’s downright impossible. The solution: understand your startup’s “honest trajectory” and align objectives of the founding team and—importantly—its investors to define and agree about what “success” looks like. Thousands of entrepreneurs would be a lot happier if their focus was a solid, growable, defensible niche business that might never go public or be worth $100 million. There’s a ton of money to be made “in the middle,” a broad swath between struggling or gasping for cash and ringing the bell at the NASDAQ.
Find the right trajectory for your business and focus not only on reaching it, but on assuring that the result is a sustainable, repeatable profit engine that can perform and grow healthily over time. Use Customer Development to identify and refine the potential profitable niche and stay in close contact with customers as you build, to be sure you’re building something they’ll want to have…and keep.
