
EPISODE 40
Confidence and Humility: Trademarks of an Entrepreneur
What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur? We ask everyone who comes on the podcast that question, and today we drill into the two traits that seem to be at the heart of all the others: confidence and humility. It might appear at first blush that these traits are diametrically opposed, but take a second look. In this episode, we dive into how this balance is manifesting in our journey at Precursa and why it’s important to pay attention to what you’re hearing from all angles in your market.
Welcome to Precursa: The Startup Journey, a podcast hosted by Cynthia Del’Aria as she dives into the ins and outs of building a tech startup company from scratch. With full transparency and honesty, she reveals everything from inception, to launch, to revenue, and beyond. These conversations will help you understand what you need to know for your startup!
In this episode, we are going deep into the balance (and seeming contradiction) between confidence as an entrepreneur and humility in listening to your customer, your market, and new data. Our founder, Cynthia Del’Aria, starts out by reminding us that building fast is not nearly as good as building right, and how important first impressions really are with your users.
Then she gets into one of our favorite statistics here at Precursa, and one that you’ve heard us talk about many, many times: 9 out of 10 venture capital backed startups ultimately fail… But what if that statistic is changing? And what if we ignored the fact that more and more investors, and people we respect greatly in the investor community, are starting to push back and call BS on the stat? We explore whether there may be a true disconnect between the published, accepted “fact” and what the people involved are experiencing.
Cynthia also shares how this is a direct example of what Jim Collins is talking about in his book “Good to Great”, when encouraging founders and executives to confront the brutal facts and to understand data you can’t ignore… And what happens if you ignore it anyway? This episode will help you look at listening to your market and your customer in new and different ways, without checking your brain (or your gut!) at the door.
Be sure to like, share, and subscribe to Precursa: The Startup Journey on your favorite podcasting platform and tune in for the next episode!
Email us with any questions or comments (startup@precursa.com). Check out our website (https://www.precursa.com) for more information on getting your startup rolling.
(00:04):
Straight to you from Denver, Colorado, this is Precursa: The Startup Journey. We share the ins and outs of building a tech startup from inception, to launch, to revenue and beyond. If you’ve ever wondered what building a startup from scratch really looks like, you’re in the right place. With full transparency and honesty, we reveal it all about Precursa on our ride from idea to exit: the wins, the lessons learned, and the unexpected twists and turns.
(00:36):
Hello everybody. And welcome back. This is Precursa the startup journey and, uh, it’s about time. We did an update episode and I thought this was a great time, cuz something kind of interesting happened in the past week or so. And I wanna kind of talk about it a little bit, but all right. So where are we? We are about to close some funding, which is great. We’re working on term, we’ve got an investor who’s just a really fantastic human, uh, really likes us really believes in us, believes in what we’re doing. And he is helping us find other fantastic humans to also invest in us, which is great. So we are closing in, on getting some money in the door, which is gonna be awesome for helping us, uh, execute this next few steps. If you are regular listener. And if you are signed up on the, the list, you may have noticed that we did not launch in December, uh, end of end of 2021.
(01:34):
Like we originally planned, we really felt like it was important. We did some really early testing with a couple of areas of the, of the product and we learned some things and we thought it was really important to make sure that everything we were doing was really aligning and was giving people the tools that they need to be successful. And so we’re taking that, we’re taking some of that feedback. We are, we extended the timeline out. We also have found ourselves a contractor, actually, uh, a group of people who specialize in data and artificial intelligence and machine learning to help us make sure you know, to do an outside audit, you know, because sometimes you, your developer, you know, you get into your bubble for lack of a better word and you kind of buy into your own beliefs about things, right? And we wanna make sure that our user is always coming first and thank goodness for our, uh, user experience designer who we had on the show, you know, a few weeks ago, she is definitely keeping us honest about this.
(02:49):
And so we are continuing to listen. We’re continuing to refine. We are now targeting a launch in August of 2022. This gives us time to get some money in the door. Um, it gives us time to refine some of these pieces that we know we need to now it gives us time to get more input and, you know, review from, uh, from some more experienced eyes on the machine learning side of the world. And we, you know, we realized that the only thing we had pushing us to launch sooner was ourselves, right? I mean, it’s one thing. If you’ve got investors and they’ve given you money and you know, then you should probably be able to speed up your launch or you should at least have conversations with them in order to understand whether or not your launch timeframe is making sense. But for us, we haven’t closed any investors yet.
(03:48):
So to take that extra time to do the things that we know we need to do, it doesn’t actually cost us anything. I mean, it costs us because it’s an extra seven or eight months before we can be potentially earning revenue. Um, so that does cost us money, but it’s not costing us so much money that it’s worth the trade off. So we did a, we at the beginning of the year, we did a big launch planning. Uh, we, we, you know, got out into tasks and stories and, and planned out in a, in a project management, you know, tool, everything that’s left to be done. We got meetings on the board for things that need people to put their heads together on different elements. And we did our sprint planning. So we know exactly what we’re working on and when, and now we’re just working towards those roles.
(04:42):
Um, and so I’m, I think this is an important message, which is that, especially in tech. And I know we’ve talked about this before, especially in tech, there’s always this pressure, you gotta be fast. You gotta be first, you gotta be fast. You gotta be first. Fast is not as good as, right. So if you go fast and all you have is fast, but not right. Not for the user, not a great user experience, you will miss the mark. And all you’ll be able to say is, well, we got there fast. Well, you got so fast, but it wasn’t the there you were going for while speed to market matters. It doesn’t matter as much as getting it right for your user. And, and there’s the biggest reason why is because if you get to the market, you get in front of the right users, they have actually take the time to sign up, use your product, do your free trial, whatever it is you’re offering, and it’s not right, or it doesn’t work. That’s all they’re ever going to remember you for you. You rarely get a second chance to bring a user back into the fold if they, if you got it wrong, the first time around. So
(06:10):
Inspiration has struck. You’ve stumbled upon a great idea that you just know will change the world. So now what at Precursa, we provide the best tools to help founders and entrepreneurs. Just like you turn their great ideas into great companies that solve real problems for real people. We believe you are the change makers, the innovators, and the force that moves technology forward. All you need is an experienced guide to keep you on track and help you navigate the turbulent waters of starting up Precursa is that guide. And with us, your roadmap to successful launch is more direct with far fewer pitfalls, Ready to change the world. Precursa has your back.
(07:00):
So what I want you to understand is that right, comes before fast and that’s the way it goes. Now, of course, there are gonna be other opinions out there about this, and you should listen to everything, right? We talk about this all the time. You should listen to other opinions, other counsel, other advice, other wisdom that you receive, you’ll receive different wisdom here on this show. From time to time, when we bring in other entrepreneurs, you have to gut check all of those things. You, you cannot take everyone’s advice because most of the time people are gonna tell you different things you have to gut at, check it. You have to feel what is right for me in this moment to make this decision, because you’re the one doing it. And we’ve talked about this before as well. But I think it, I think it’s important enough to repeat, which is you are doing something new, is building a tech startup new, Nope is building a tech startup that has an AI and ML component.
(08:05):
New Nope, is solving this problem that we’re solving new. Not really. I mean, people have been trying to solve it. That’s, that’s how incubators and accelerators came about, uh, you know, in the early two thousands, you know, right around the time of the.com bust. Um, and since then we’ve seen programs that are trying to figure out a way to be less about human interaction and more about giving people freedom and time to work on the same kind of stuff and get the same value, but in their own pace and in their own timing, not related back to a mentor or giving up 12 weeks of your life or whatever. So this isn’t new, but no one’s built Precursa. No one has set out on the journey that we’ve set out on for this company, with this heart and this purpose and this why no one’s done it.
(08:58):
So we have lots of people who we go to for insight, for wisdom, for advice, for support for, Hey, can I run something by you and see what you think that doesn’t mean that all of them are right? And it doesn’t mean that all of those things are created equal. They’re all just data points. And at the end of the day, we have to sit with the data points and then we have to do a gut check. And so I encourage you to get really good at learning how to listen to your gut checks. It can save you some heartache. It will save you from making some mistakes, uh, and it can help also direct you to who are the people that resonate with you and who more closely match your gut instincts so that you, you can build a team around you. You can build advisors around you.
(09:52):
You can build a group of people around you who will help you see what your gut’s trying to tell you, not fill you with a bunch of stuff you gotta Wade through. Okay. So we’re about to close the money. We’ve got a new launch date. We are working so hard and, and so smart on you, the best possible platform. And it’s so validating to me because, you know, I’ve, I’ve now sat in a couple of different development, uh, meetings with some of my clients who are starting to do development, work on their own projects. And, um, you know, I don’t do that kind of work anymore. So I have a couple partners around town and, and even sees that I work with for this kind of stuff. And what’s interesting is now I’m starting to see, and it’s so validating for me, but I’m starting to see even development shops and development companies are starting to encourage people to go through, you know, the lean canvas framework or to read lean star, or they’re asking questions like the ones that I have been helping my, my entrepreneurs ask for a decade and a half now, developers are starting to do it.
(11:08):
And I love that because I always say, you know, developers are great at building what you ask for. They’re not great at asking, is it the right thing? And it’s finally starting to get through and more and more developers are asking, is it the right thing? And that makes me so happy. I mean, it makes me so, so happy. Um, so I’m, I’m validated by what I’m seeing in the market. Like I said earlier, we, we are seeing some other competitors. They’re not exactly doing what we’re doing, but they’re, they’re starting to try and think about how to solve the same problem. And they’re thinking about it in really cool and innovative ways. A lot of these are gonna become partners of ours, um, strategic partners that we, that will, you know, will we’ll work together to fill in gaps with each other and to, and to help more people get done, what they need to get done. So it’s a very, very exciting, exciting time in the world. And that brings me to the thing that’s happened over the last you week and half or so. That’s made me take a little pause.
(12:18):
So you’ve heard me say thousands of times, probably on this show at some point, at some point, I’ll go back and count them all and we can, we can see, but I know that everyone who’s listened to this show at least once or twice knows the statistic that nine out of 10 venture back startups ultimately fail. Okay. And this is one of the statistics that, and the 42% of startups build something, no one wants. We usually bring those up in just about every episode and definitely in definitely in most of the episodes where we have an entrepreneur that we’re talking to, or I, or an investor that we’re talking to. So something interesting happened last last week, about a week ago, one of my co one of my clients, uh, who’s building a healthcare startup, a healthcare tech startup was at an event where a very prominent gentleman in town talked about thiss stick.
(13:15):
And, and, and I’m not gonna say who it is. I’m I actually know this gentleman. I respect him immensely. And it’s only because it came from him that I’m now starting down this journey of discovery that I’m on. I’m my goal is actually to get him on here to talk to us about this, but until I can do that, I’m not going to say his name because I, it to be respectful because I do respect him. And I, uh, he is someone who, if he says something I’m, I am more inclined to believe that it’s true. And this makes me wanna dig in. So he did a presentation for a group of startups, and he said, how many of you have heard that nine out of 10 startups fail? And he raises their hand. He said, okay, good. And how many of you have heard that venture venture companies, private equity, you know, investors are looking for that one outta 10 to be huge in makeup for the other nine outta 10, everybody raised their hands.
(14:10):
And the very next thing out of his mouth was that’s. And now I wasn’t at this event. So I’m hearing the second hand from my client. And my client said he went into a lot of, he went into a lot of data and he talked about his organization and all this kinda stuff. And he, he couldn’t really gimme the specifics the way that, I mean, I would’ve been furiously taking notes. Right. But the thing is, you’ve heard me say a few times before that, when we talk to investors, they always say, oh, well, my, my average is better than that. Or I do better than that. Or I’m better at picking than that or whatever. There seems to be a widening disconnect between what I’m gonna call official statistics like St. Like statistics that you can find on pitch book on crunched base on Oler, on Statista Statista.
(15:02):
I always say that wrong on STTA. Um, there’s you know, so, so that’s what I’m hauling official. And then what the population says about their own results or their own experience. Like I said, I, the person who said this and who was, who gave this presentation and who was trying to debunk this, I respect him immensely. You know, if it was one, you private investors, you know, just around town or whatever, I, I might go, you know, they just, they, they wanna say face, they don’t, they don’t wanna admit that they’re, that they have a problem picking whatever. But when someone of this person’s caliber and someone who has been in this space for decades, I mean, decades says something like that to a group of entrepreneurs, I have to take pause and I have to start to look at what new data is potentially available.
(16:08):
And how does that, how does that fit in with what we have always known to be the truth? And I’m gonna put the truth in quotes because in something that evolves as quickly as business environments in, particularly because we just had this massive up, you know, world changing business, changing, like complete upheaval that the, that the pandemic has been to the ways that we’ve thought about business and the ways we’ve thought about school and the ways we’ve thought about politics and the ways that we’ve interacted with each other in, in, in ways that has not happened ever, probably in anyone’s current who’s currently living’s lifetime. Right? Probably. So, so if I, so, so we’ve talked, uh, I know a few of my guests have recommended this book and I’m gonna recommend it again. And it’s Jim Collins, it’s called good to great, uh, in his fir in, in the book before this one in the name of it is escaping me right now, but he talks about great companies in the makeup of great companies.
(17:12):
Good to great is about how do you take a company the that’s poised for greatness and ramp it up? Like, what are the traits of the companies that go from good to great. One of the chapters. And I, I just got done listening this chapter again, you know, like two weeks ago, I wanna say, which is probably why this is on the top of my mind. So, so viscerally the way that it is. And I think, I think the timing of this whole thing is probably perfect and not an accident, but in chapter four, he talks about confronting the brutal facts he talks about. And specifically what he says is great companies take information and data and turn it into information they can’t ignore. And this is so, so like, what’s the word I’m looking for. It it’s so poignant because how often do we hear someone?
(18:15):
You know, if you’re in the startup world, if you’re in a business world, you probably know people who own businesses, where when confronted with data, when confronted with facts, especially the ones that don’t move in their favor, or that say something antithetical to what they’re doing or what they’re believing about what they need to do next in their business. You we’ve all seen these people who are confronted with that. And they say, oh, that’s that’s bull, or, oh, that’s BS, or, oh, that’s just a whatever, right. They just push it off and push it off and push it off. And eventually it catches up with them. Mostly, usually to their detriment. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes they were right, but there is something to be said for being able to ingest and make everything important so that you are sure that you’re directing yourself in the right way.
(19:07):
And you aren’t missing trends. You aren’t missing opportunities. You aren’t missing a shift in the market that you’re in. So let me put this in perspective for this example that I’m talking about. This person who I respect greatly is starting to push back in the community against this statistic. If I ignore that, I am ignoring a huge part of my market, which is Precursa helps investors. Also Precursa helps investors by removing a lot of the initial time and energy. They have to put into finding companies that are worth their time to do due diligence on if I start to ignore and I start to propagate at something that is no longer true or isn’t true, or they don’t resonate with that takes away from my ability to be seen as helpful to them, for my ability to be an asset for them, for my ability to be seen as an authority, alongside them in the market that we both care about.
(20:12):
And it undermines all of my efforts to solve a problem for them. So this is information that I now cannot ignore. I refuse to ignore because it’s just coming from too many sources and too many sources that are verifiable, that, that have veracity. So what am I gonna do about it? Well, the first thing is I know this gentleman, you know, we’ve met several times. His organization has invested in several of my startups, my client’s companies, uh, a couple that some friends of mine have started. I’m gonna reach out to him. I wanna know more. I wanna ask him, tell me, tell me what, what you said and tell me what you mean and explain it to me because I, I feel like there’s a problem here. Maybe it’s a different problem and that’s okay, but I need to understand, and all the sides of this problem, right?
(21:08):
Like I’m a champion of entrepreneurs. We all know that my heart is about entrepreneurs, but you cannot only look at entrepreneurs and ignore incubators and accelerators and investors and vendors who are trying to sell to entrepreneurs and, uh, coaches and advisor and potential. Co-founders like, you can’t ignore the rest of the community. And only say, I’m a champion for entrepreneurs, because if you ignore the rest of it, you might give them bad advice. And I don’t wanna give you bad advice ever. And markets evolve things change. We get better at stuff. So the first thing I’m gonna do is I’m gonna reach out to this gentleman and I’m gonna say, can we have a conversation because I want to know more. I want to understand. And what I would love is to get that conversation on the podcast so that we all could listen and understand, because here is the thing I would rather throughout the course of the next 10 or 15 years, that we are getting Precursa to the place where we want it to be, where it’s helping millions of entrepreneurs and investors and incubators and accelerators worldwide.
(22:20):
Every year, I would rather say I was wrong, or I would rather say things have changed. I would rather fall all on the sword and learn and continue to grow and continue to be able to build the products and services that you all need, that we all need in this community then to hold onto being right, and never be able to make a difference in this realm. Never be able to make a difference with this problem. Never be able to make the differe that is in it is in my heart to make. So I’m gonna reach out to him. I’m gonna have a conversation and I’m gonna find out what’s going on. And then I’m gonna dig more. I’m gonna talk to other investors. I actually have, uh, one of my research assistants is reaching out to all these other organizations, crunch bay, uh, pitch book, um, LER, uh STTA we I’ve got her reaching out to say, we’d like to understand the source of some of your statistics, cuz we’re seeing different stuff in the marketplace.
(23:24):
Can you help us understand, like how did you come up with this data? Because if all we do is blindly quote statistics, and we never question has this changed. We never question what were the circumstances of it? We never question what makes that difference. The way that Jim Collins does in good to great where he says, it’s not enough to just say these companies were great. What made them great? How did they get there? What were the defining characteristics? You know, what’s interesting is in one of the chapters, he points out that compensation actually doesn’t make a difference in a good to great CEO. Like it doesn’t, you know, you have to compensate people appropriately, but how you save them. Most of the good to great companies actually were not, did not have CEOs that were compensated at the top of the market, which is interesting. They were middle of the market top, top three quarters of the market, but not the top 25th percentile. So what I’m saying, what I’m trying to, what I’m trying to get at with all this is that new day data is going to arise. Now you notice that I’m not saying we changed anything about what we’re doing in the platform.
(24:33):
Most of the time new data will either direct your go to market strategy, to be different. As Mary growthy talked about your product messaging strategy to be different or, or it’s about you understanding a market in a way that you can continue to educate yourself and educate your users so that you can remain an authority because you, you aren’t holding onto the thing that got you started 10 years ago, right? Ignore data at your peril. Now, if you remember a few weeks back, we talked to Shanna French. Who’s the founder, uh, of simple spirit. And she is sh her whole business is about teaching entrepreneurs and teaching business owners. How to make decisions intuitively how to lead their businesses. Intuitively we are a huge proponent and a huge of this, this thing. And you’ll remember in that episode, she said, you know, you’re gonna have a lot of data and you gotta gut check it.
(25:33):
I even said it right at the beginning of this episode, right? You gotta take all the data and then you gotta gut check it. And you gotta listen to your intuition. If you are ignoring data, there’s no way you can gut check that. So if this, if my client tells me that this gentleman said this and I say, yeah, he’s full of crap. That’s totally not true, whatever. He’s just trying to say. Facer like, if I, if I say that I cannot gut check that data, I cannot dig in. And I do not. I now have cut off an avenue in which to better understand a very critical part, a very critical component of the solution, the problem that I’m trying to solve and the solution I’m trying to build. Because again, I can’t do this without investors. Entrepreneurs cannot do this without investors. If I don’t speak to them, if I don’t get them invested in the platform, then it’s more D for us to solve the bias and inequity and funding problem.
(26:33):
One of the hypotheses that we have, and it’s starting to bear fruit already, which I love is that if I, as an investor can create what we’re calling an investment thesis in Precursa, where I say, these are the industries I’m interested in. This is the, this is the stage or phase of company I’m interested in. This is the Precursa score minimum that I’m interested in because I know, you know, below that point, they really aren’t engaging with the work. But above that point, they they’re engaging. Right? If I know those things and, and we have help educate investors about what those things are and teach them how to use the platform. And we give them tools to be able to tweak those things for themselves. And if I can see what companies are doing, how they’re engaging with the platform, how mature they are and how ready they are, both from their company standpoint, but also from a founder standpoint, without ever seeing their gender, their race, their political leanings, their what, you know, their religious values.
(27:31):
If none of that is required in order to get me a group of companies that look good on paper. And I already know that they match up with my values and what I’m for, you’ve already removed some bias because I’m more likely what we’re finding is those investors are more likely to do due diligence on companies they wouldn’t have before because they have this new set of information that tells them something about the founders and the companies that matters to them. So we see white male investors who are actually having more in depth discussions and due diligence processes with black entrepreneurs, with female entrepreneurs, with Indian entrepreneurs. And so we’re already seeing this start to come to, and the more that we can build out the platform and the tools to continue to support that effort. But if I ignore what investors are saying about how they perceive the market in terms of their success rate, how they perceive the market in terms of what success really means, I will never get that chance with them because I’m the quack who keeps telling them that they’re wrong.
(28:49):
90% of the time. Now that statistics been around a long time. So I’m hesitant. I, I, what I’m not going to do is throw it out the door entirely because I have a very large body of data also from very reputable sources that tells me this is reality. Just the facts ma’am bring the data, not the drama, right? What that does not tell me and why I need more information and why I can’t ignore that new information is because what that data doesn’t tell me is the human side behind all of this. See, that’s ultimately what this gentle and was trying to get at is there’s another side that isn’t about the dry statistic. And that’s what I need to understand. So this is, this is information that I cannot ignore to do. So would be at my peril to do so would be at the detriment of this company that I love, that I am putting so much time and energy and money and, and experience and heart into building.
(29:52):
So I will not ignore it. And this is a really cool message for you entrepreneurs out there, because it’s, it’s easy us to, and I’ve talked about this before, about the hubris of entrepreneurs, right? It’s easy for us to get caught up in all of our I’m right. Or I know this market really well. And, and it’s interesting cuz it’s entrepreneurs, we have to walk this line of I’m the expert. I know what I’m doing. And I believe in myself to the point that I am willing to put everything on the line to go after this thing, to build this company, which you know, in many, many episodes, we’ve talked about the challenge of being an entrepreneur and the, the grit and the perseverance and the resilience that it takes to do that because it’s not easy and it’s not for everyone. So there’s that side of it.
(30:43):
But then there’s also this, this side where you have to be all of that stuff, but you also have to have humility because humility is what has you listening for information that you can’t ignore? If it was one random investor who I talked to one time and my sense was, you know, I had some particular sense about this person or the way that they conduct their business or whatever. And, and they said it, I probably would be like, yeah, whatever that guy doesn’t know what he is talking about. It is because there are reputable, good people who invest in good companies who do good work, work in this space that we are in it’s because those people are saying it that it becomes information I can’t ignore. And it takes humility to be able to do that. And so I guess I’m saying it, I’m not, that kind of sounds like I’m cheerleading my own humility.
(31:37):
That’s not what I’m doing. What I’m trying to point out is as an entrepreneur, not only do we walk the line to find balance between execution and vision, which is very difficult, especially once you’ve gotten into the execution of a vision, sometimes you gotta like pull yourself out of the quick sand and get back up and look again and remind yourself the vision, right? I just did this with a client the other day. Um, and we laughed about it, but not only do you have to straddle that, but you also have to straddle an unwavering leaf and faith in what you’re building with humility and the willingness to hear where you might be missing the mark or where you might be wrong or where you might need to tweak what you believe. And this is where I think it’s so brilliant that Paige says entrepreneurs are the realistic optimist or the optimist realist.
(32:25):
That’s what she says, because that’s exactly what it is. You have to still have that faith and you have to still have almost a blind optimism for your vision, but you have to be realistic and take in data and, and listen to the market and understand how it’s changing. And you know, when we talked to Mary Grothy, she said, your go to market strategy is probably gonna change a lot, especially in the beginning, but you have to be listening to the market. You have to be taking in data in order to know if and when and to do it the right way. So this is just another, another cut at that. And you know, if you would’ve told me even a month ago that I would be in this place about this particular statistic, I would’ve told you, you were crazy because it’s it’s fact it’s out there it’s data, but maybe something is starting to shift.
(33:15):
And I want to understand that because I want to build tools that if there is a trend, I want to like pour gasoline on that trend so that it builds up into this huge thing and the whole momentum of the startup community changes. If it’s an anomaly, I wanna understand why, what are you doing? That’s working that’s different than the community at large, because that’s a way I can help entrepreneurs and investors find each other and do good work, right? Like I wanna understand more. So I’m excited because for a while, we’ve just kind of been on our path and we’re building what we’re building and we’re getting great feedback and we’re tweaking what we’re doing. And that’s great. This feels like one of those shifts where you go, this could be either a moment of what, what changed Precursa trajectory for the better, or for the worse.
(34:07):
And I want the data, I want the data. I wanna talk to people I wanna understand. And this is, is such a great opportunity to get to know the investor side of this com this community better and to understand their need needs and their problems and their struggles and where they’re coming from. Which like I said, if I, if I don’t get all of the pieces, we can’t serve entrepreneurs. This is not a solo game. Yes. It’s very lonely. And yes, you are the one who ultimately is the executor. It comes down to you, but you don’t do it alone. Own entrepreneurship is never accomplished, is never successful alone. And I, I just wanna be clear about that distinction. And so this is one of those times where Cynthia’s the CEO and founder of Precursa has to say, okay, there’s new data. I gotta go, I gotta go explore this.
(34:59):
I can’t ignore this. It would be to the detriment of my company, more to the detriment of my users and, and the business and all of the people who’ve worked so hard to solve this problem. It would be a detriment to them. It would be a disservice to them to ignore this data. So I challenge you where, where are you ignoring? Where are you asking the questions, but not listening to the answers? And can you get humble? Like get a little humble. It’s not easy. I’ll tell you that we were in the car last night. And I was telling David that this came up and the very first thing out of his mouth of course was well that guy’s full of. And it made me laugh. Right. Because I was like, huh, that’s so funny. Like that was my first reaction initially until I membered.
(35:58):
And, and then, and then the very next thing that, that came to mind was Jim Collins saying, you know, companies that ignore data that CA that shouldn’t be ignored, they do so to their detriment. And so we had this conversation by the end, he was like, huh, you’re right. Like, you really do need to understand this better. Don’t you? And I was like, yeah, but how funny is it that our, our initial reaction usually, and especially for entrepreneurs, which David is as well, is usually I’m right. And I have to believe in my rightness in order to keep going. And I, I not, I think I know there’s a different way to do that. And so we’re gonna explore that. So I’m hoping to get this gentleman on the show. Uh, I will definitely let you know, as soon as I have a convers station, sus I have more information, uh, we’ll dig into this a little bit and see if we can uncover, you know, because again, this, this whole show is about watching how a startup evolves, watching how a company gets built, watching the process of learning from users and building solutions, building products, building services, whatever it is, the, that actually fit a need, but in order to do that, you’re going to evolve, but you gotta listen.
(37:03):
And so this is us in the, you know, in an active opportunity to listen, analyze some data, understand what it means and how it, how it impacts our company and all of our strategies. And so I wanna share that with you real time, because we didn’t get to do that the first time around, right. When we started this podcast, um, almost a year ago, now, we, we had already done all of all, all of our, uh, user interviews and all of our data and analysis. Now we’ve had some pivots along the way, but this is our first real opportunity to get, to go speak to a group of users and understand something that looks different than the data that we have so far are. So I’m really, really excited. All right. It is a great time at Precursa. Please, please, please tell your friends about this podcast.
(37:48):
The more people, you know, we’ve got a great audience. We are creeping up, you know, by the end of last year, we were creeping up towards 800 to a thousand user, you know, downloads a month. The more, more this podcast grows, the more entrepreneurs we can help, the more investors we can help, the more, uh, incubators and accelerators we can help. Like the more impact we get to have, please share it with people in your life who wanna be entrepreneurs or who are repeat entrepreneurs, or who might just get a kick out of listening to it and might find it interesting and to like follow or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so that you never miss an episode. All right, next week we will be back with yet another entrepreneur experience episode, and I will be back with y’all real, real soon. So in the meantime, happy entrepreneur, and I’ll see y’all next time.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Precursa: The Startup Journey. If you have an idea for a startup and you want to explore the proven process of turning your idea into a viable business, check us out at precursa.com. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss an episode. Until next time…
Copyright © 2021 Precursa | All Rights Reserved | Site Created by Natalie Jark
Copyright © 2021 Precursa | All Rights Reserved | Site Created by Natalie Jark