My extended group of college friends at Brigham Young University numbered around 25-people in a couple of different circles. Inside that group I know of five people including myself that decided to make entrepreneurship their career. Ryan Smith founded Qualtrics, a billion dollar enterprise company. Zach James founded Zefr, one of the top YouTube platform companies valued in the hundreds of millions. Bentley Williams founded multi million dollar business Airbounre Trampoline. Jeremy Robison founded Beloved Shirts which employees 22 people and boasts Katy Perry as a client. I started Startup Grind.
Other than playing a lot of Halo we don't share a lot in common. Most of us started down corporate America's vicious path working at HP, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, and Electronic Arts. None of us shared the same major. A couple got great grades, a few of us didn't. None of our parents had the same professions. So why are we entrepreneurs and why have we not failed like 95% of businesses?
We certainly have failed a lot. Zach's company started as MovieClips.com which was not smooth sailing from the beginning. That business morphed into Zefr. Bentley attempted and failed at a few other ideas before finally latching onto Airbourne. Ryan, the only one that started in college, was in the basement for 7-years and didn't pay himself for most of that time. I have launched too many failed products to count. Jeremy graduated in Psychology - now he makes shirts for celebrities. How did that happen?
I have seen and talked to thousands of entrepreneurs in the last few years. I feel like I have almost seen it all. Rarely do I meet someone in a situation I have never encountered. But looking at my own friends, and watching them from afar, the biggest differentiator I see in them 8 years removed from college is that they're still in the game.
The common thread between us is the ability to survive. We're survivors. Great entrepreneurs show up everyday long after most people have given up. Some people get it right at first but very few. 98% of the great entrepreneurs I interview don't get product market fit with the first or second product. But by the 5th or 6th and a few years under their belt in they start to see the patterns and start to be a domain expert.
I love this Vinod Khosla clip talking about failure and risk. "How many good people to you know that have gone without a job for 6-weeks in Silicon Valley?" The lie of entrepreneurship is that the risk is overwhelming. What great entrepreneurs like Vinod understand is that the greater risk is missing out on what you can't see in order to have what you can see.
If you're smart you will always be able to find a job somewhere. But your opportunity window to be an entrepreneur gets smaller each year as the kids get older, the mortgage gets bigger, and you get more and more comfortable with a salary and vacation days. You can always get a job. But you can't always chase your dreams.