The Long Run
Entrepreneurs are a lot like long-distance runners. Your conditioning, mental and physical, matters. There are a pack of you when you start a race. The pack separates more and more as the race goes on. Elevation changes and weather may force a change in execution. You have to manage your pace if you are to finish. Finishing, however you define your finish (be that a lifestyle business that eventually stops when you do, a liquidity event, intentional wind-down, family succession - however you choose to move on), can often be characterized as winning, even if you did not finish first.
Do many entrepreneurs start out with crazy hours, intense dedication, total commitment? Most definitely. Is that healthy? I think not. Is it required? Also, no. It is just the prevailing model.
“You know, I don’t understand why you don’t treat yourself better, do the crazy things that you do?”
Perception
The social media world shows you our curated lives. There is a narrative here. Sleeping in the office, living on caffeine, bringing in food at all hours. Getting a product or service to market, that is unique and terrifically monetized, under tremendous time pressure, using other peoples’ money. You read about the spectacular success (in my business, I will cite Riskalyze) much more often than the raging flameout (here’s looking at you, WeWork, although Mr. Neumann isn’t exactly broke). Sometimes, you see both, like Compaq Computer.
There is a common conclusion that successful businesses and their founders invented a unique product, process, or service, and were able to effectively apply one or more of these as they created their businesses.
They are not only not required, they are pretty awfully unusual in the entrepreneurial community. We do read about them, often. The hero story is attractive.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey
Reality
What is much more prevalent (I wrote about it here, as relates to my business) are 10+ year, overnight successes (they are boring, except at their near-death stages - hello, dopamine hits and clicks - until they aren’t). Amazon, that paragon of our modern, retail society, with its amazing cashflow and dominance, was not always so. Started in 1994, Amazon reached the point of consistent, positive cashflow in 2004 (!) and consistent profitability in 2012. Along the way, the stock took you for a wild ride, and an awful lot of investors (and equity analysts) lost patience and faith.
Oracle looks reasonably similar.
Let’s talk about their histories.
History
If you have been in or around the software business, you know that Oracle, the enterprise software company, had its beginning in the relational database business. The big hitter in this segment, at the time, was IBM (surprise) with its DB2 product. Look at Oracle now. Their current focus is enterprise software, delivered through what we call the cloud. Yes, they still manufacture relational database software, and look where it is in their product listing: the bottom.
I suspect everyone knows the Amazon story.
How Did I Get Here?
You may argue that their founders are unique and immensely driven, talented people. True. You can say that about many founders/entrepreneurs who either flamed out or achieved a measure of success not on this level. Perhaps they are and were better at execution, at financial management, at building better products. That may be true now. It was not true at start-up. User interfaces, performance, and code quality/bugs were all issues. Managing cashflow? Also a concern at times. Here is one thing that is absolutely true. Their products and business models were replicable and not unique - these are not the sources of their competitive advantage.
Both Oracle and Amazon have proven to be agile and resilient. I think these are the differences. Amazon went from books to books and music to adding supply chain services for retail to all of that and providing a plethora of cloud and cloud consulting services. And, oh yeah, Amazon Prime. Oracle went from an extremely effective marketer to a broad-based supplier of relational database and Java software to what is arguably the premier provider of enterprise software in the world as well as a major technology consultant.
They have both moved quickly as the technology and retail markets for their products changed over time. The underlying operating systems and software development tools have changed tremendously. They adapted. Leadership needs changed as they grew into corporate behemoths. They adapted. When things did not go their way, they did not stop. They were resilient and changed. They have been resilient during recessions. The businesses neither rested on their laurels nor stopped significantly investing in research and development. When a product did not meet expectations, they either fixed it or killed it.
Will this continue? So long as they stay agile and resilient, I think so. Those are cultural things, though. The wrong leadership could kill them quickly. Like most predictions or forecasts, who knows? Here is my favorite work on forecasting. I have my own piece on this, too.
I am certain, however, that agility and resilience will never be bad things. When your approach is not working, change it. Quitting something that does not work is a good thing. When something breaks, including you, find a way to recover and move on. You might need to move on to something else, versus taking the next step on the prior thing. Move on.