The Prepared Mind
Louis Pateur
Dans les champs de l’observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés. — Louis Pasteur
I think after all the fundraising I have done and been a part of, I have gotten into the habit of meeting several investors in a single day. After all, talking to investors activates a different part of my brain than talking to founders.
On this particular day, I got in a heated discussion with a friend of mine about perceived value of founder experience. Yeah, it was less exciting than the meal we were having at the Palo Alto Creamery.
Yet, in the midst of the conversation, Jeff explained that his mission is to find founders with Prepared Minds.
And of the all the conversation, those words stuck with me. Prepared Mind.
In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind. — Louis Pasteur
Coming up with a great idea is not enough.
I am a firm believer that true entrepreneurs are born not bred. We come out of our moms with product suggestions for the doctor (“Hey doc, its an easier onboarding experience if you don’t smack me…”) and never stop.
We see the world as it could be, and it physically hurts our heads to not express and explore how that change can come about.
But, that is not enough.
Today I realized that I have spoken to more than 1,000 founders all in various stages of business building. I have started to see patterns emerge. Not in the VC sense of pattern matching (which any founder will tell you is a hated concept) but more simply—every successful founder that I have met has had a Prepared Mind.
A Prepared Mind covers two distinct realities. First, there is a deep understanding and passion around the market in which you operate.
If you can’t answer questions like:
How many potential people will use your product?
How much will those people spend to use your product?
Will they be sad if your product goes away?
You do not have a Prepared Mind. No one should know more about the market in which you operate. No one. Not a co-founder, an investor, an employee, a user or even Wikipedia.
Second, a Prepared Mind understands the potential of the product/market and is emotionally efficient in making decisions. A Prepared Mind is brutal.
If you are not ready for the emotional efficacy required to make rapid adjustments to your business *and* team, you are not ready to run a company. Keep playing with the idea and look for someone to lead the business, you will end up doing nothing but fucking it up for everyone.
Yet, there is a more important aspect to the Prepared Mind — the understanding of its lack of permanence. Everything you do as a founder is diametrically opposed to your Prepared Mind. Everyone you talk to is inadvertently creating distraction and losing your ability to focus on what is necessary. That Techcrunch post? The call from a big VC? The party where a potential customer is rumored to be at? The stories about how hard everyone else, but you, hustled to make the impossible, well, possible? All of these things destroy the Prepared Mind.
As a founder, you need to be fucking Rocky carrying logs in waist deep snow.
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Create a reality where chance favors you because you have created a culture that thrives on being more prepared than anyone. Create a company where deep understanding and expectation of the real outcome and the reduction in the importance applied to the perceived outcome.
Great victories do not come because you are better, but because you are better prepared.