The Twice as Long Theory
Paul Grahm wrote a great essay a few months back called, “What Startups Are Really Like“. If you haven’t already read it, go read it now, its an incredibly on point article about some of the things that surprise founders most when starting companies. Collectively the SocialGuides founding team of Scott Campbell, Christian Gammill, and myself have been involved in at least a dozen startups and would most definitely echo nearly all of the things in the article. They also echo many of the things we heard in the Shotput Ventures program that SocialGuides has had a pleasure of being a part of. One of the things however that I feel hasn’t been articulated as well is the length of time it takes for things to happen at startups. (At least) twice as long as you expect. Heck even this article, predictably enough, I was originally planning on writing two months ago. But alas, getting around to blogging again has taken me twice as long as expected.
So what is the twice as long theory? It simply states that everything you do will take twice as long as you think it will. Yes, even if you are focused, yes even if you have smart people on your team, yes even if you subscribed to “modern methodologies” like agile. Why? Simply because founders are inherently aggressive in what they believe can be accomplished (you have to be) and incredibly resource strapped at the same time (well you should be anyways).
We basically started working on SocialGuides at the beginning of 2009. At that point my timeline looked a little something like this: have a demo in 2 months, have a private alpha in 5 months, a beta in 8 and start commercializing by month 12.
What actually happened?
Well first it took us twice as long to build the demo. This was basically a year before LBS was hot so first we underestimated what it would take to build the demo, since it was relatively new territory. People tell you to build the smallest thing possible to demonstrate your most basic vision, we knew that, and still we didn’t. Then we got into SPV and heard all these inspiring stories from other successful serial entrepreneur and our (well my) eyes got big.
So we decided to build our own lbs platform. We spent all summer building it and by the end of summer we had a pretty successful private alpha that was basically focused on people and places in Atlanta. The thought occurred to us to use Twitter where millions of people were already talking about locations (and was pointed out again and again by one of our awesome advisors, Jeff Hilimire), but our eyes were too big. And so now there it was end of summer and while we had a cool product, I knew we had a long road ahead with the LBS wars that were looming and we were already months behind where I thought we should have been.
So we decided to gamble…
We took the “location stuff” we built and transformed instead to completely revolve around the Twitter platform. By the end of 09 we quietly released a beta and started privately seeding our mobile version. Basically it took us a full year to get to where we were expecting to be with the product by the end of summer. And now that Q1 2010 is winding down we are finally where we want to be as a business, it’s just that, yup, you guessed it, it took us twice as long to get here.
So here we are.
And one of the things I’ve learned along the way is that this whole twice as long part can kill you if you’re not careful. We’ve lost key team members along the way, we’ve had to do at least one major pivot and few minor gambles along this road, and all of that can take its tole on people. From both experiencing through previous companies I’ve been involved with, and seeing from the outside on others, I’ve noticed that by the time you get to where you wanted to be, you often have lost sight of what it is you were doing all that work for.
With the process taking you twice as long, it can be like the wind has gone out of the sails, just as the boat is finally seaworthy (sorry for the corny metaphor but I love sailing ;). Maybe you are out of funding, maybe most of the team has left the project, or maybe you just dont have the motivation to work those 18hr days like you did a year ago. And so you are on the verge, yet you can’t hardly see it, because of exhaustion and fear.
Yet those entrepreneurial success stories you read about, nearly always get to that point. Stories like Evan Williams at blogger being the only guy left in the founding team by the time he hit bottom (and subsequently got a second wind) are often not the exception, it’s the real story behind those rags to riches books. (side note: everyone with even the slightest entrepreneurial interests, should go read Founders at Work)
So is there a lesson in all of this?
Not really, just simply some observations after a year in SocialGuides. Finding your focus takes time, pivoting on an opportunity takes time. And in the technology world the ground is constantly shifting and time is your enemy. But then again time is against everyone else to and it’s easy to forget this. I’m personally fortunate, because yes, it’s taken us twice as long to find our footing, but we have, and many don’t, and I have the privileged of being part of an amazing team that is stoked on SocialGuides now more then ever.
