A Letter to Startup Founders
Dear Founder,
While it is impossible to summarize over seventeen years of experience, what I know today and have been through on my journey, and what I’ve learned since I was 22 in a brief letter, here’s some key highlights of those combined experiences that I hope you can learn and grow from:
1. The Journey will not always be easy.
When I was 22, when starting my business at that time (2001) I had no idea that I’d be faced with the challenges that come from growth, navigating an economic recession, a housing market crash, and everything in-between. Those challenges were all substantial in their own ways, and many of them are cyclical: meaning we’ll most likely see another recession at some point in our lifetimes again, especially during the course of your new business.
Would it have made me NOT start a business and forge out on my own? Not necessarily. But before setting out on your own journey, know that being an entrepreneur it is not for the faint of heart. And running a startup is an all in, or not at all venture.
Know that the road will not always be smooth or easy…entrepreneurship is a long, winding, twisty road with lots of tricky terrain and challenges to navigate, no matter what industry you’re in.
Be nimble and adaptable, able to pivot, and always have your eye on the future no matter what today’s challenges are. Coupling this with the following considerations will help you drive through these challenges, and provide a purpose to the temporary “pain” that can come your way when you’re manning your own ship.
2. Know Your Why.
Knowing your “Why” — Why you do what you do, Why you are dedicated to solving the problem you’re solving for your customers, and Why you and the business you’ve created exist — will be the ultimate guiding light as you navigate all the challenges and problems that can come your way as a Founder.
If you’ve founded your own startup simply to make money, you may find this taxing and soul-crushing to say the least at times, BUT if you remain connected to your Why throughout it all, you will survive.
But know your Why before you start this Journey, as it is just that: A Journey.
3. Follow your Passion.
Knowing your Why should be inherently tied to your Passion. Again, this must be above all else: simply “making money” or “getting rich.” Knowing your Passion and what fuels you must be much more — you could call it your “higher calling” or your “purpose,” but whatever you call it, knowing it makes traversing steep and treacherous terrain will drive you through it to “success” as you define it.
4. Success is relative.
Understand that “Success” is often defined in arbitrary terms by the world at large (“she’s successful, I’m sure she’s rich”), but in the end, it is my belief that Success should be defined in terms of the Future you want to create that ties in with your Passion, and your Why.
For you, Success may be being able to surf all morning, work for five hours, and spend the evening with your family. For others, it may be tied to owning a home and working twelve hour days because you love what you do that much. Your business should not define you or be the end of you, it is a vehicle to your next destination in life.
It’s not just about money or “riches” … the best place to be is making a difference in other people’s lives in some small, or large, way. That’s the underlying spirit of entrepreneurship: how can I fix this problem that I see that no one else sees? This gap in the market and/or in other people’s lives.
I don’t believe that Steve Jobs created the iPod just because he wanted Apple to garner more investment dollars or a higher stock price…he wanted to change our lives, how we listen to and access music. He wanted to turn a huge technological gap in the market into something that enhanced our lifestyles perpetually…and he most certainly accomplish that, creating entire industry paradigm shifts in the the process.
If you understand that Success is indeed relative to you, it is my belief that the rest will fall in line, as has been my experience. And yes, even if you fail and try again, the same is true.
Finding Success as you define it is an adventure, and entrepreneurship is a journey. At the end of the day “business” is a series of experiments, and some experiments will inevitably fail.
If you’re trying to have a perfect batting average, don’t…it won’t happen that way. There will be wins, and there will be losses. Each one will inform your next steps from there for the next plateau to reach, or valley to cross.
I encourage you to study Richard Branson’s failures, read up on how Walt Disney started a fledgling animation shop in Kansas City and nearly went bankrupt before ever getting off the ground or finding investors. Regardless of the challenges, the failures, and the successes along the way, I can assure you neither of them wanted to live a life of monotony and settle on a life of well-paying (maybe) boredom, being little more than a cog in someone else’s machine.
If you were you interested in that, you wouldn’t be reading this in the first place.
I can sum it all up perhaps with this one quote: “Adventure may hurt you, but monotony will kill you.” I’ll take the adventure any day.
Fifteen years later, my adventure continues to be never-ending, challenging, and rewarding all at the same time.
So to you I say: grab the bull by the horns, and jump on the Adventure, the Journey, you’ll never know what’s on the other side and along the way if you don’t take the leap.
Onward and upward!
Cheers,
Curt Cuscino
Founder & CEO
HypeLife Brands
[a progressive brand development + marketing agency helping disruptive B2C lifestyle startups engage the Millennial Generation]
Learn more about my agency: https://www.hypelifebrands.com
Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/curtcuscino/
