七転び八起き: Stay in the Game

The Japanese proverb "Nana korobi ya oki" has been translated for me by my oldest son as "fall seven times, get up eight". I have it on the wall of my study. It motivates me when the going gets tough, as it often does.

Talking to a struggling entrepreneur today this proverb was resonating in my mind. "why is this so hard?" she asked me after yet another dog and pony show to try and convince investors to back her in a world changing product rollout. "If I had known five years ago that I would be neck deep in debt, working 18 hours a day and facing constant rejection..."

My entrepreneur friend (client) is relentless, bold, accomplished, indefatigable and very very smart. Her product is recognised by her customers as world class and they are signing on to test it. She has 15 of the worlds top financial institutions in her orbit. But, the VC community is relatively indifferent. In this context the VC equivalent of "show me the money" is "show me traction" (meaning de-risk this for me big time).

Some of these guys (it's always guys) really love the sound of their own voices: "we only invest in scaling businesses", "we like $1-2m revenue", "its not our sweet spot", "the sales cycle is too long", "the problem is not big enough", "the problem is too big", "the valuation is too high", "the exit is unclear"....

Norman Mailer has this line in his 1984 minor classic "Tough Guys Don't Dance". It goes like this "I was on the edge of many things and there was more than a little violence in me". Its a pretty good description of me in some of these meetings.

I'll admit that moving from Japanese proverbs to late career Norman Mailer is a bit of a journey but working with growing companies is like travelling with Odysseus on a daily basis. All the good stuff (vision, anticipation, comradeship, the kick of solving hard problems) and all the bad stuff too (starvation, rejection and various monsters and demi gods actively indifferent to your destruction). The journey to Ithaca was a picnic by comparison.

My take home from all of this can be distilled into my seven rules (+1) for entrepreneurs:

1. It's going to be twice as hard as you think
2. It's going to take twice as long as you think
3. It's going to cost twice as much as you think
4. You are not alone, ask your crew for help, don't suffer in silence
5. When you get a win, celebrate it
6. The answer is always "no" until its "yes"
7. Fall down seven times, get up eight

For most entrepreneurs success is the result of years of dedicated hard work and resilience. When I read about 2 year old Deep Mind being acquired by Google for $650m, I think about Protein Sciences.

Protein Sciences was acquired by Sanofi for $650m in 2017, but it took >30 years to get there and a history of failure. Formed in 1983 PS failed bold and big, losing $100m on a failed vaccine for AIDs in the 1980's (when the company was still called Microgensys). In 2008 they faced bankruptcy and a hostile takeover and failed on a Diabetes vaccine - yet they survived. Four years later they had some luck as Pfizer gifted them a fully furnished facility to preserve local jobs and in 2016 BARDA financed the Influenza subunit vaccine product that would drive their eventual exit value.

My observation is that success is the product of skill, luck, timing and persistence. Of all these factors the only one you can really control is persistence. To win, you first have to be in the game.

My eighth rule therefore is a restatement of my 7th.

Stay in the Game.