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The founder of Vanta didn't start with a grand vision for her multi-billion dollar company. Instead, she deliberately followed the 'quantity over quality' principle, teaching herself to code and building over 25 small projects. Her massive success emerged from this prolific experimentation, not a single stroke of genius.
Early ventures that failed weren't seen as setbacks but as low-cost learning opportunities. This perspective, framed by his grandfather's high-risk business, eliminated fear and built foundational skills with minimal downside, making eventual success more likely.
Conventional wisdom to 'stay focused' is flawed. Breakthrough growth often comes from making many small, exploratory bets. YipitData's success wasn't from perfecting one thing, but from the one small, tangential bet each year that drove 90% of the growth while others failed.
Aspiring founders often stall while waiting for a perfect idea. The most effective strategy is to simply pick a decent idea and build it. Each project, even a 'losing' one, provides crucial learnings that bring you closer to your eventual successful venture.
Success isn't linear. Mobile gaming giant Supercell didn't start with mobile games, and drone delivery firm ZipLine began with a robotic toy. This shows that foundational failures in one area can be the necessary learning experiences that lead to market-defining success in another.
Successful entrepreneurs often don't perceive their numerous small projects as failures or formal business attempts. By framing them as hobbies or experiments, they lower the psychological stakes. This allows them to generate the high quantity of ideas necessary to eventually land on a successful one.
Harris Kenny's growing SaaS, OutboundSync, is his seventh venture in nearly seven years, following what he calls a failed consultancy, a failed agency, and four failed SaaS ideas. This reframes past ventures not as failures but as necessary iterations on the long journey to finding product-market fit.
The most successful creators are often the most prolific. Peter Levels, a famous indie hacker, revealed that 95% of his 70+ projects failed to make money. His success comes from just four ventures, demonstrating that a high volume of attempts is the necessary path to finding a breakout hit.
Rapid startup success stories are misleading. A company's quick victory is almost always the result of its founder's decade-long journey of grinding, learning, and failing. The compounding effect of skills, credibility, and network building is the true engine behind the breakthrough moment.
The most successful founders rarely get the solution right on their first attempt. Their strength lies in persistence combined with adaptability. They treat their initial ideas as hypotheses, take in new data, and are willing to change their approach repeatedly to find what works.
Finding entrepreneurial success often requires a decade-long period of trial and error. This phase of launching seemingly "dumb" or failed projects is not a sign of incompetence but a necessary learning curve to develop skills, judgment, and self-awareness. The key is to keep learning and taking shots.