The Importance of Being Extremely Earnest

Late last night I read a post by Garry Tan on entrepreneurs not drinking their own Kool-Aid. It resonated with me as kind of secret recipe behind all of the pitching a founder must do in order to create, fund and grow their company into a market - look for small wins, focus on the details, don’t spend outside of your budget, don’t be too rigid or stubborn about your original concept. That may seem like the mundane or the assumed for those with a grand vision, but a truly value-additive investor encourages an entrepreneur towards the immediate and focused steps that validate passion and help achieve something that resembles the massive market opportunity or projected user growth that most pitch decks describe. 

But without the passionate vision - the Kool-Aid - all is for naught. In a pitch meeting, at a demo day, during a Monday stand-up or end of the week one-on-one, a twinkle of passion should be the mystic sprite in the room, skipping just out of reach but inching ever closer, a constant inspiration to every audience and assignment. 

Just as the simple tasks, logical burn-rate management, and flexible direction validate the original idea and vision, so that vision propagates the needs of company management and developmental focus. To get caught up in one’s own pitch is to lose sight of why you’re pitching, but without extreme desire at every turn its hard to envision “IT”,whatever one’s idea may be, succeeding. 

How do you break through brick walls without a little help from the Kool-Aid Man?