There’s a reason rockets are stored in silos. Working on stuff in silos kill startups. I laugh at how we ran things when we first started our company. Fired up about every new idea we had we tried to do them all… independently. I was especially bad for this. Focusing on the next great idea, I would mentally block out what the rest of the team was doing and put all my energy into the task at hand. While it might not be the worst way to build a company, it’s still a terrible way. If we were to survive we knew we needed to change, so how did we change our core culture and align our focus?
Every day ordinary people live extraordinary true stories. A few weeks ago I met Amanda Lindhout. She’s a smart caring person working hard to raise the level of woman’s education in the failed state of Somalia. The story doesn’t start there. We’ve all heard of the pirates of Somalia, kidnapping ships off the nearby coast. Amanda understands the dangers of Somalia all too well.
Have you ever experienced creative block? You need a good idea and you can’t seem to think of one? I used to run a small clothing company out of my house. I was doing everything from designing t-shirts to manning events and following up with sales. Then my creative juices stopped. I was having a really tough time coming up with new creative designs. My friend Jaron is chatting to me one day and says, “Why don’t you go out find clothing styles you like, and then ask yourself, ‘How can I make this even better?'”
Without practical business experience, going to conferences and reading books on starting and running a tech business can give people the wrong impression. Starting a new venture appears to be really easy. Have an idea, go through a tough grind, come out the other end prosperous and successful. Best case scenario, you start a new idea get bought by Google or Facebook and don’t even need to go through the grind. Listening to the self-promoters, I mean teachers, can leave someone with this impression. I mean they got me. 
You’ve heard the expression, “If you build it they will come”? It’s a myth and it’s a dangerous one at that. Too many startups and blogs are created believing (or hoping) it to be true. And some would say it is the reason most new startups fail.
