Elon Musk tells startup founders to expect years of pain and develop a high pain tolerance. He says the key is relentless focus on making customers want you to succeed. Great entrepreneurs are still born every day, but they need the perseverance to handle it.
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There's a friend of mine who's got a great saying about creating a company which is trying to build a company and have it succeed is like eating glass and staring into the abyss. So what tends to happen is it's sort of quite exciting for the first several months of starting a company, and then reality sets in. Things don't go as well as planned. Customers aren't signing up, the technology or the product isn't working as well as you thought, and then that can sometimes be compounded by a recession, and it can be very, very painful for several years. So I think, frankly, starting a company, I would advise people to have a high pain tolerance.
Yeah. Yeah. And thanks for reminding us of the harsh, very harsh and brutal reality of launching a startup. There is that Elon Musk Slash, Tony Stark mystique. You know, people think, you know, you are. Robert Downey Jr. Modeled his character Tony Stark Iron man on you. It's easy, it's fun. You're a superhero, titan of industry. But it's really hard. It's really difficult. And it's something that requires perseverance and grit. Do you fear that maybe in this generation or the younger generation that they don't have that perseverance and grit to take on these really tough challenges?
I think some people do, but I think it is definitely true that, I mean, maybe there are occasionally companies that get created where. Where there's not an extended period of extreme pain, but I'm not aware of very many such instances. But I do think that new great entrepreneurs are born every day and we'll continue to see amazing companies get built. So. Yeah, but I would definitely advise people who are starting a company to expect a long period of quite high difficulty. But as long as people stay super focused on creating absolute best product or service that really delights their end customer, if they stay focused on that, then basically, if you get it such that your customers want you to succeed, then you probably will.
You have to focus on the customer delivering for them.
Yeah. Make sure if your customers love you, your odds of success are dramatically higher.
