lakshmi shenoy
Every day, CEOs and entrepreneurs share the ups and downs of building their businesses. Their biggest question is: What does their business need to do to not only survive, but thrive?
With 50% of startups not reaching the five-year milestone, many founders need help. A recent post by Bessemer Venture Partners says that while all companies have an initial spark, not all companies are able to sustain that fire and build continued success. . Entrepreneurs who can sustain the flame demonstrate “the resilience, perseverance, innovation, and ownership mindset necessary for long-term success.”
So what can entrepreneurs do to keep this flame alive? At my Florida-based startup community, Embarc Collective, we’ve experienced wild market changes, a global pandemic, and a significant decline in venture funding. Despite this, we have observed a 96% survival rate.
Here are three of the biggest commonalities that I’ve seen over the years contribute to the long-term success of these companies.
desire to hear
The pace of learning when you’re building a business is intense. Every customer discovery call, team meeting, roadmap, and board update provides a huge amount of data points that can improve your operations.
Every entrepreneur may see this information, but not necessarily listen to it. Listening to this information means turning it into actions that improve your business over the long term.
Entrepreneurs who listen and transform are curious. And Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, once said, “Curiosity doesn’t kill the cat. It kills competition.”
Your curiosity – your desire to listen, change and grow – is your greatest asset and competitive advantage.
Curious entrepreneurs want to get inside the minds of their customers. Early on, entrepreneurs who have a genuine curiosity about how to make their customers’ lives better tend to take a faster path to product-market fit. They are continually learning what matters most to their users and acting on it.
Because of this, these entrepreneurs often adapt and grow quickly. They can and are willing to make changes in real time based on what they learn about their customers and their business. Their roadmap is written with a pencil, not a pen. Don’t hesitate to reconsider your plans if your customers start to point you in a new direction.
Additionally, this type of entrepreneur is often an expert at switching situations. Due to the nature of their work, founders are often asked to wear many hats. This means you’ll be exposed to a variety of inputs and tasks throughout the day, and the only way to navigate them is to master your mental filing cabinet.
The ability to context switch is an incredible determining factor that separates entrepreneurs who can context switch from those who don’t. The best entrepreneurs know how to hold all the information at once and categorize it in real time to inform productive iterations of products, messaging, and processes.
Indifference on the uphill, opportunity on the downhill
The reality for founders is that even if one thing goes according to plan, 10 things will not. Strong entrepreneurs, those who can build successful businesses, have a healthy relationship with the inevitable ups and downs.
It’s important to strike a balance. Celebrate your wins (and admit your losses) and don’t let one or the other define you. When something goes well, acknowledge it and don’t be shy to celebrate with your team. These accomplishments keep your motivation high and prove that you are working towards something big.
However, it’s important to realize that those victories can be temporary. You can’t let them define you or your business. Entrepreneurs who dwell on past victories can miss out on information and learning moments about where to go in the future.
When it comes to downs, it’s important to remember that challenge fosters repetition. A CEO friend of mine often says, “Hardship isn’t happening to you, it’s happening to you.”
Difficulties, obstacles and bad news all contribute to a better and stronger future, as long as we know how to deal with them.
Lean into the downs and use it as an opportunity to learn, evolve, and grow. In the long run, you’ll be grateful for those moments.
patient mindset
Building a company is an endurance sport, and you must treat it as such to succeed. You are an athlete of some kind and need to take care of your health in all aspects to perform well. Founders are core assets to the success of a business and need to be taken care of like any other asset. Burnt out founders lead to burnt out businesses.
Additionally, it is important, but difficult, for founders to admit that they are not a brand. For a company to scale, a brand needs to acquire an identity of its own beyond its founder. Otherwise, everything a brand does will be limited by the perspective and capabilities of the founder or founding team. In the same way that you allow your child to grow into who they are, you need to allow your brand to materialize outside of yourself.
At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that building a business is not linear. There are good times, bad times and everything in between. Your business will succeed by working alongside entrepreneurs and helping them develop the skills they need to create long-term success.
Lakshmi Shenoy is the CEO of Embarc Collective, a startup hub located in downtown Tampa, Florida. Before he moved to Tampa Bay, Shenoy served as vice president of strategy and business development at Chicago-based Incubator 1871. Prior to 1871, he worked for some of the world’s top media and advertising brands. She received her BA in Sociology from the University of Chicago and her MBA from Harvard Business School. She currently serves on the boards of the Florida Aquarium and Junior Achievement of Tampa Bay.
Illustration: Dom Guzman
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