“Follow your passion”. How many times have I heard people say that in my life? Honestly, I have no idea what that means. My passions are around rolled up aces over kings and hitting a Pick 5 with a long shot in the last leg. But no idea how that would have helped me professionally. I think it is the same thing with being a creator.
Everyday, my life is like Shark Tank. Someone stops me somewhere and wants to pitch me. I was playing craps in Vegas a few weeks ago and someone actually tried to pitch me their startup while the dice were rolling. My answer to most of these people is that they really need to invest in themselves before they pitch me. As a creator, your first thinking should be as an investor. That will be your greatest opportunity for big returns.
In my thirty plus years of being a founder or investor, I have spent almost all of that with other people who had an “entrepreneurial spirit”. While no one can really define what that means it is pretty easy to define and see patterns in people and why they want to be an entrepreneur.
During pitches from a start-up founder, I often ask the question, “What makes you the right person to build this company?”. During a pitch a few years ago, I had a founder give a unique answer to the question, ”I just needed a job.” While that was refreshingly honest, it was also an answer that left me a little hollow as a potential investor. There was no talk of solving a problem, speaking to a customer base, or even maximizing profit. Needless to say, the startup didn’t get my money.
Many years ago, I was at a startup pitch with a founder and he was so adamant about the fact that he was the greatest of all customers of his company. He used the product all of the time and was still trying to figure out why more people weren’t using his product. I asked him the simple question, “how many people in the world are like you?”
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