So I am not the first VC/Entrepreneur to write about "catching the wave." A big part of start-up success is timing. Being pre-mature or late to the game are ingredients for failure. Perfect timing is a lot like surfing -- need to catch the wave so you go soaring with the tide. Of course, like with surfing, catching the wave is not enough -- it is just the beginning. But an essential beginning.
But I want to take the analogy a bit further. Sometimes you manage to stay at something long enough (or return to it after a hiatus) and you can actually experience second or third waves.
I have been involved in start-up life on a professional basis since 1994. Almost twenty years (pretty scary thought!!). I am now seeing the second and sometimes third waves within specific industries. I am blessed to still be active, and with enough strength (mental, emotional, and physical) to continue to "catch the wave."
As an example, as some of you know, I co-founded a start-up last year with my good friend Jeff Pulver, called Zula. We are focused on how teams communicate, and developing a platform to allow for team/group conversations to continue beyond the conference room. But more on that in a later posting...Important part of the story is that Jeff and I are engaging a field that we first worked in 18 years ago. We have participated in and witnessed multiple waves (and sometimes tsunamis) within the communications industry. It doesn't make the surfing any easier, but it does give us the perspective that waves do not come one at a time, and often difficult to tell exactly when to push off and hang ten. But try we do.
A friend called me the other day to say I needed to come pick up a box of stuff I had left in his store room when we moved up to Hanaton. I skimmed through the contents of the box this morning, and found presentations I delivered for Delta Three back in 1998 and 1999, as well as business plans for other start-ups. When looking through the Delta Three presentations I reminded myself just how pre-mature we were, although we still managed to catch early waves in the changing landscape of how people communicate.
I also reminded myself how visionary we were were -- the problem is vision does not allow for success. I can envision a wonderful wave, but if I don't get my tuchus off the beach there is no chance I will succeed to fly through the surf.
Of course surfing doesn't come naturally to all of us, and even for those that it does, intense training and planning is required to face the big waves.
May we all be blessed to catch the waves we want, at the time we want, and ride them to shore. Again and again.
