Yesterday I wrote about persistence. As fate would have it, I later caught up with an entrepreneur who was evidencing a great kind of persistence.
His startup is an enterprise SaaS play, and he has an initial base of happy paying customers. So far the local VC community hasn’t fully realized his great potential, so he has been bootstrapping.
I think he has been in the fight for two years, and it has not been an easy road. He has a big vision, an important vision, that is his north star, but he is willing to pivot the details along the way to make it a reality.
Some early success drove them to start creating a sales force, but they realized that quite a few pieces of their business needed to evolve. He had to cut the team back down to the core product group and maximize their runway while they focused on getting the formula right. He has had to make some risky bets on direction and resources.
So here we have (in no particular order):
– a smart, talented entrepreneur
– a great work ethic
– consistency to an important vision
– willingness to make changes to reach his goals
– actual paying customers
– deep focus on delivering value to the customer, while keeping his big goal in mind
– mature understanding of the importance of sales and marketing (at the right time)
– realistic focus on team size and cash flow to keep the business going
I’m sure it is a very stressful ride for him, with hard decisions and plenty of sacrifice. He is respected, but not one of the “cool kids” with a bank account flush with venture capital money and the social status that comes with VC money (which is whole post unto itself). But I have huge respect for what he is trying to do and how he is trying to do it.
To me, this is an example of the right kind of persistence. Respect.