Short motivational excerpt from Jason M. Lemkin (YouTube, Sep 25, 2023) urging startup founders to improve performance each quarter and to be better than the prior year. He advises setting achievable quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year growth improvements (even small gains count), challenging the team, and parting ways with underperformers who lack confidence or vision.
Pick yourself off the friggin ground and do better than last year. I'm not saying you should go from 10% growth to 180% growth in one year. Challenge yourself next quarter in each of these next quarters to do better than the last quarter and to do better than 12 months ago. There's no excuse. It is not worse, it is better. It may be a smidge better, it may be a lot better, it may be barely better. But do better. And maybe part ways with a few folks that don't believe it, that don't see it, that don't have the confidence, that can't see the future. That helps too. So move on from the underperformers and challenge yourself that there's no excuse to not grow faster as a startup than last quarter and last year.
