Lessons Learned From a Decade of Building

This is a guest post written by Alex Reed, Alex is the Chief Commercial Officer of Vsimple, a B2B SaaS business headquartered in New Albany, Indiana, as well as a trusted advisor to numerous startups and growth companies across various industries. Prior roles include founder/Chief Marketing Officer of Truman’s and head of marketing for Big Ass Fans. He’s also an Endeavor mentor, volunteering his time to share experience and insights with founders within or applying to the Endeavor community.

Lessons Learned From a Decade of Building
After spending the last 13 years working in, starting, exiting from and reflecting on early-stage businesses, I gained clarity that only comes with the hands-on experience of an operator. That doesn’t mean I have all the answers. In fact, it’s quite the opposite; the more I’ve learned, the less inclined I am to offer prescriptive advice. However, I will share observations from my own circumstances. Because although I’m a big believer in best practices, there are few universal truths when it comes to starting and growing a company. With that caveat out of the way, let’s get into some of my biggest takeaways.

Originality Isn’t Everything 
True invention is a rarity. Humans continually build on and improve existing ideas. Aspiring entrepreneurs can get stuck looking for the idea that will revolutionize the world, when what the world often needs is incremental improvement (which compounds). The founder of Big Ass Fans, which held hundreds of patents and patents pending, strongly proclaimed the brand was worth more than intellectual property. And you don’t build brand simply by boxing out every potential competitor with IP (which is a very hard thing to do in practice); brand is built through a combination of offering useful products or solutions and pairing them with amazing customer experiences. Sometimes it’s that simple.

Different Skills at Different Stages
After working with startups employing anywhere from 2 to 1000+ employees, I realized being really smart or accomplished doesn’t guarantee a fit in a position. This occurrence is bi-directional; entrepreneurs may find it challenging to lead large teams and, conversely, executives at late-stage startups or large companies may struggle with something brand new. The best entrepreneurs (Jeff Bezos, anyone?) are able to grow as the company does, but this is the exception, not the rule. This doesn’t necessarily mean firing yourself as the company grows. Instead, recognize what your strengths are and continually surround yourself with complementary (not complimentary!) talent. 

0-1 Is Thankless
I started my career with a business producing $25 million in annual revenue (which would grow 10x over the next decade). I’ve also started and advised pre-revenue businesses. While there’s more upside to starting (or joining very early), know that the job is thankless. You won’t have an IT department, a finance team, HR or any kind of support staff. You’ll probably make less money than you could elsewhere. And there’s no “time off” because there aren’t others covering for you when you’re away. If you’re considering founding a company, consider getting some experience with a small but growing company to prepare yourself (financially and career-wise) for the lonely journey from 0-1. The average age of a successful entrepreneur is over 40, so don’t discount the value of learning from others who’ve been there, done that.

Timing Matters. (And Be Flexible!) 
Great ideas and great people can still flop. External circumstances can change and new variables may impact the way you approach your company. I’ll share a few examples here. First, a close friend and partner in several ventures started a company right out of college in the early 2000s. The idea: audio transmissions of popular media articles delivered directly to iPods. Yes, this individual basically had the idea for podcasts. Solid as it was, the idea came too early. Download speeds were horrendous, and cellular networks weren’t equipped for this type of data yet. Perhaps a few years later that company would’ve grown to be a Spotify or iHeart Media. The second example is the origin story of Big Ass Fans that few people know. The company started as an evaporative cooling business which installed sprinkler systems on the roofs of manufacturing and distribution buildings in the south. Technically, this was genius. Commercially, it was challenging for a number of reasons. But out of this struggle appeared the opportunity to address the cooling needs of these facilities in a different, more desirable manner (with big fans, of course!).

Knowing When to Press the Gas
One of the more challenging aspects of entrepreneurship is managing the different stages of business. “Product-market fit” is one of those terms that can have various definitions, but is important to identify. Two really positive indicators are organic growth and referral rates, which suggest a strong path to market and affinity for the product. When there’s an obvious connection between what your business offers and a target consumer, it’s incredibly exciting, and it’s time to capitalize. Focus on how to build on the momentum, whether that means additional product development and refinement, raising growth capital to fuel customer acquisition, building a team or any other growth-oriented action. There’s no “aha moment” that indicates it’s time to move; instead, look for small points of validation that give you confidence in what you’re building.

People Are Everything
As noted already, great ideas can still flop or change. Ten times out of ten, I’ll bet on people over an idea. Good people don’t bat 1000, and that’s OK. Concern yourself more with their processes, their reputations, their work ethics and their hearts. If nothing else, life and business is much more enjoyable when you surround yourself with determined and kind people. After all, maybe the real success was the friends we made along the way 😉  

Ignore Advice 
OK, ignore is probably too strong of a word here. Instead, calibrate the advice you receive. There’s a reason the greatest economists fail to predict recessions, meteorologists routinely miscalculate the severity or location of weather systems and futurists often mispredict the future. The reason? Variables are too bountiful, and humans have an amazing ability to identify patterns and create narratives out of random, uncorrelated things. Recognize the difference between specific, actionable advice and sweeping generalizations. Go deeper and ask follow-on questions to better understand if the advice is applicable to your situation. Don’t accept advice at face value, even if you have great respect for the advisor. Inherently, the entrepreneur’s journey is unique. If he or she wanted a cookie-cutter role with a clear path to advancement, well, that exists in spades. Open-mindedness, flexibility, curiosity, perseverance and a great team around you will go further than any growth hacks or playbooks, so lean into the uncertainty and take solace in knowing we’re all out there just winging it!

Carve Your Own Path
Every founder’s journey will be unique. While we sometimes romanticize the entrepreneurs with “why didn’t I think of that?” ideas, having an open mind, a willingness to adapt and the strength to persist through difficult times will get you much further than a one-time stroke of genius.