In 2024, the bar to have children or make friends is higher than ever. Now, it seems for starting companies too.
To start a company these days, your idea has to be branded perfectly, executed flawlessly, and funded immaculately from day one. Like a type-A parent whose unborn child already has admission to the most sought after preschool in Brooklyn, you have to be totally in control, your friends and family well aware you’re on a successful path.
Even more than that, you’re idea has to not just be big, it has to be massive. When I used to work at a big VC fund, every founder I met was chasing an enormous scale with ideas often reverse-engineered to be venture backable and disrupt trillion-dollar industries.
The media, buoyed by these jaw-dropping sums of money, lap this up but in the process force smart, accomplished people to abstain from entrepreneurship unless it fits this go-big-or-go-home mold. At its worst, the media even provides some kind of false status signalling along the way. One can just imagine that Mckinsey associate relishing a future LinkedIn post of themselves outside YC headquarters once their yet-to-exist company is accepted.
If all that sounds too intense, that’s because it is.
What if we encouraged people to start more “mediocre” companies?
Companies that will never be worth $10B or even $1B. Companies that target niche markets, that have OK or good business models, perhaps no immediate network effects (*gasp*) but instead serve their target market exceptionally well and do most other things pretty averagely.
This could look like:
Working on companies for long periods of time, on and off
Working on companies part-time while maintaining other jobs to de-risk financial investment
Building in hyper nichess that were once considered “too small”
Investing your own personal capital into your ideas before asking other people for money
Running companies that support only the founder or a very small team
Celebrating hobby projects and “lifestyle” businesses that don’t evolve beyond their initial scope
Creating communities of entrepreneurs building these types of businesses
Developing new media outlets covering and celebrating these types of businesses
Building companies you actually want to build versus ones you think will be highly fundable
Solving timeless issues vs trying to time the technology hype cycle
Celebrating all entrepreneurs in society (Not just VC backed ones)
If you’re an entrepreneur reading this and feel at all relieved at the mere idea of any of these suggestions or have more thoughts on the current paradigm, please leave a comment below, I’d love to hear from you.
I am not starting a small business, had a successful one, but I appreciated this thought process going public! Thank you for writing a great thought provoking article.
Bless you Dr. Tai
Mary Jane