I met with a technical founder who spent seven years at a big tech company that’s a household name. I was surprised to learn that he spent a lot of his time rebuilding decade-old systems. The company worked on those systems only when it had to. On the outside, this company is cutting-edge, but internally, not so much . . . but the public would never know. The founder said the company didn’t grow to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars by fixing things that worked perfectly fine.

This reminded me of my time in corporate America. I learned then that some of the most well-known organizations have antiquated systems or processes. Not pretty, but things still worked, and that’s what mattered most. If it wasn’t broken, they weren’t in a rush to replace it.

Early founders should remember that good enough is all you need in the early days. Get something working and pushed out. You needn’t worry about using the latest and greatest technology or building something perfect, because those aren’t always the best use of resources. In many cases, done is better than perfect.

Today I listened to a founder pitch a solution to help small retailers sell more products to consumers. It facilitates taking an in-person interaction with a consumer online. The need for such a solution preexisted the pandemic, but the pandemic intensified it.

This pitch reminded me of the early days of my company. I bootstrapped it, so resources were limited. Because I couldn’t afford to hire a big team, I handled almost every aspect of the business. I was stretched thin. Whenever I found reasonably priced software that saved me time or money or enabled me to do something that I couldn’t do manually, I happily signed up. I recognized and was happy to pay for the value the software created for me and my business.

Change is flying at us. We’re facing more change in the next decade than we’ve ever seen. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) won’t be able to keep pace on their own. They’ll need software to keep their businesses relevant as the world changes. I see a big opportunity to help SMBs of all kinds navigate the winds of rapid change.

During the Thanksgiving holiday, I caught up with friends who work in various industries and asked how 2021 has been for them. Their responses were consistent: it’s been busy for all of them. The companies they work for (or own) are growing, and some are having a hard time keeping up with all the growth.

Today I looked at the calendar and thought about the rest of the year. We have about three-and-a-half workweeks until Christmas. Once Christmas hits, it’s pencils down, as the year is essentially over for many (not all) industries.

I think December 2021 is going to be the last leg of a spectacular year. We’re not going to see a holiday-season slowdown: the next three-and-a-half weeks will be a mad dash for many people who want to close out the year strong. And I’m one of them—looking forward to it!

I read a quote today about decision-making that I love:

Call it like an umpire: you’re either out or you’re safe.

As a founder, you have to make quick decisions, often using intuition. A quick decision, even if it’s wrong, is better than stopping the game.

I didn’t know that in my early days as a founder. As I gained more experience and confidence, though, the speed of my decision-making improved. As my decision-making sped up, the company’s growth did too. I learned to not worry about being right or wrong. Instead, I made a decision and focused on learning. Right or wrong, there was always something I could learn and apply to make better decisions in the future.

I still try to make decisions quickly and learn from them. Sometimes I’m right and sometimes I’m wrong, but I’m always learning!

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A founder I know had a great vision for his company. He worked for years to get customers and had success, but not the hockey-stick growth he expected. Then the pandemic hit, and customers flooded in.

I caught up with him and asked him about his journey. His most important observation was this:

I knew I was right. I just didn’t know when I’d be proven right. Giving myself enough runway was the difference maker.

Timing is a huge factor in the entrepreneurial journey. Often, founders can’t control it. When things don’t go according to their planned timeline, they have a choice to make: keep building and wait for the time to be right, move on to something else, or choose some hybrid of the two. There’s no right or wrong answer. Each founder must make the decision that’s right for them and their team.

This founder chose to keep going, and it worked out for him in a big way.

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As an early founder, I had huge knowledge gaps. I didn’t know a lot about start-ups, and that resulted in slow execution and decision-making. Filling those gaps helped accelerate my execution and thus the success of my company.

Since then, I’ve been passionate about continual learning. I’ve developed my own system, but I recently started researching how others approach it. I came across this quote from Warren Buffett:

Read 500 pages every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.

This really stuck with me. I agree that knowledge is like compound interest. It builds upon itself. New knowledge isn’t acquired in isolation. It combines with what you’ve already learned to improve your understanding and decision-making. When you look back to a long time ago, you realize that your understanding and decision-making are light years ahead of where you were then because of the compounding effect.

Warren’s 500 pages every day isn’t doable by most people, but frequency is more important than quantity. Reading daily essentially increases the compounding rate of your learning. The more often you add to your knowledge, the better your understanding and decisions become. If you read every day, that’s 365 chances to compound your learning.

The last part of the quote explains what separates the good from great. Most people could take advantage of this life hack—but won’t. So, if you commit to this one habit, you’ll set yourself apart from almost everyone over time.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Warren Buffett and other successful people read daily. They recognize it’s something they have total control over that has an outsize impact on their chances of being successful.

I love talking to founders about their plan to assemble a team, especially the compensation part. It can be a leading indicator of what’s to come. I regularly speak with early founders who have a big vision for their companies but haven’t thought through team compensation.

Building something great takes a great team. Great team members want to be compensated for the value they bring, and rightfully so. Great people have options—if one company won’t pay them what they’re worth, someone else will. There are two ways to compensate people: cash and equity. If cash is readily available, then paying market salaries will make it possible for a founder to assemble a great team. If cash isn’t abundant, then a combination of cash and equity is typical. It allows the founder to hire more people with limited cash and lets employees have an ownership stake in the company. They get some cash now and benefit from the upside potential of the company if it does well.

If you’re looking to do great things, you need great people. If you don’t compensate people fairly, your chances of attracting a great talent plummet along with your likelihood of achieving your big vision.

I’ve been thinking about some of the concepts I read about in Atomic Habits. I enjoyed the author’s thoughts on changing your beliefs to change your outcomes. Of central importance is identity. If you don’t believe you’re the sort of person who would take the steps (i.e., form the habits) necessary to get the outcome you want, you’re less likely to do so. I’ve been discussing this with friends. Today, one of them shared a passage from a book he’s reading:

Identity is very deeply who you are—not who someone else thinks you are or wants you to be. Your identity is how you define yourself, while your identification is how others define you. How you identify yourself does not necessarily need to match how other people identify you. While it is true that our families and communities play an important role in shaping how we see ourselves, ultimately, how others attempt to define you is no substitute for how you answer the question “Who am I” for yourself.

This resonated with me. I love how the author describes identity as who you believe you are and makes a distinction between identity and identification. Subtle, but powerful.

As I reflect on my founder friends and myself, I think this is true. We all believed we were entrepreneurs before we started companies—even when others believed we were something else. That strong sense of identity guided us to take the actions that led to starting companies and ultimately to entrepreneurial success.

Who do you believe you are?

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Today I had the opportunity to participate in an event whose purpose was to give early founders candid feedback on their businesses. The founders got real-time as well as written feedback and rankings in core areas, such as vision, execution, and storytelling.

These founders have small teams, so they’re still involved in the day-to-day combat of building a company. But they spent most of today away from operations to focus on their businesses at a high level. We went over everything from go-to-market strategy to vision to hiring plans.

It was great helping these founder consider things from this perspective, and I think it was much needed by some of them. Today was a reminder of how important it is to get out of the weeds of running the business. Early founders can find themselves on a hamster wheel if they work in the business too much. They must be intentional about making time to regularly work on the business from a high level. I know this because I learned it the hard way when I was a founder.  

I’m excited for these founders and can’t wait to see what the future holds for them!

I’ve been chatting with a founder friend about a deal he’s considering doing. The seller doesn’t have any other suitors, probably because they’re asking for above-market pricing. My friend knows this and has been trying to get them to a price more aligned with the current market. All the numbers support my friend’s argument.

Today we spoke again, and he told me he’s going to try to meet them in the middle. He’ll likely end up paying more than the deal is currently worth. Not expecting this, I questioned his logic. His explanation: he’s focused on future, not current, value. He has a vision for creating more value using the asset. If he executes on it, the difference between what the deal is worth now and what he paid will be negligible. He sees a great opportunity to create a large amount of value and wants to capitalize on it quickly before someone else sees it.

Recognizing greatness is important to any founder’s success. I didn’t do it early in my journey, and it hurt me. When this founder began focusing on how great this opportunity is, it changed his thought processes, actions, and sense of urgency. I’m looking forward to seeing him create something profitable and great out of this opportunity!