Fundamentals and Healthy Mindset Are Key to A Successful Entrepreneurial Journey
This past September, I took part as a panel on the Founder Forum Series hosted by San Jose State University (SJSU)’s Office of Innovation and SpartUp Incubator.
We had over 50+ student entrepreneurs in attendance. The moderator asked thought-provoking questions that had kept me and other panelists on our hot seats!
During Q&A, one of the student entrepreneurs asked about “How to be Ultra Successful” on their journey.
My immediate response was that “Ultra” successful is not a realistic expectation for every entrepreneur. While we’ve read about many successful entrepreneur stories, we don’t see failures being amplified.
This kind of narratives distort the truth about being an entrepreneur and doesn’t help a founder become resilient, patient, and committed to their journey even when times are tough.
A good baseline to cultivate a rewarding and successful entrepreneurial journey is to start with focusing on your vision alignment, fundamentals, and a healthy mindset.
Vision Alignment
Vision acts like a North Star for a young start-up because it helps a company stays on course based on their most trusted beliefs that they are creating and building something big and have impact for their company, as well as to the community and society as a whole.
It’s important in the beginning to align your work with your vision, especially during formative years when the company is forming teams and getting their products ready to go to market.
It will become less of a focus once the start-up and its team are in alignment on where they want to go, because consistent and steadfast execution on its vision and strategies will become keys for business and entrepreneurial success.
The Fundamentals
I believe that founders need to set up their company and team with strong fundamentals from which they can build on for incremental success. Fundamentals consist of:
- Vision
- Problem and solution validation
- Market understanding
- Business model clarity
- Minimum Viable Product
- Team skills and culture
- Funding
Having strong fundamentals will help a young company learn fast and fail fast. Failures are lessons in disguise and will allow start-ups to build a better mousetrap, put together better systems and processes, and develop personal growth and leadership to tackle challenges coming their ways, without losing hope on success of their products.
The Mindset
On top of learning to make their business viable, a young team needs to develop soft skills such as having an open mindset; being approachable, coachable, and authentic; not afraid to ask for help, and apply those soft skills on a consistent basis.
Founders should not be distorted by narratives that provide falsehood on the reality of their entrepreneurial journey.
Not every start-up founder will have a “Unicorn” company, but every founder can become great by being determined, focused, optimistic, making relevant product meeting customer needs and living life.
Being realistic allows founders to admit mistakes so changes can be made with their products based on data and market demands. It’s a healthy way to lead an enduring successful company.
