Sunday 7 March 2010

Fred Wilson: Trying Stuff Out


Unplanning your business is about having the guts to try things out, to make decisions, to be spontaneous. And that means you’re going to make mistakes. That’s part of a ‘just do it’ mindset, part of prototyping your ideas. And once you realise you’ve cocked up, you need to quit, and move on.

Fred Wilson is a Venture Capitalist in New York who blogs at AVC.com (cool domain). It’s great to hear Fred’s VC take on entrepreneurship and I love this post about the importance of being action oriented:

 “People ask me all the time about the traits I look for in entrepreneurs and action orientation is at the top of the list. I'd much rather back someone who makes 100 decisions a day and gets 51 of them right than someone who makes one decision a day and gets it right”.

 I’ve seen so many management cultures get stuck in the analysis of an idea, before it’s even launched. Whereas, it’s much more effective to just go for it – try something out, then stand back and measure how you did. Fred Wilson is a fan of the ‘trying stuff out’.

“You can think and debate about stuff all day long or you can try stuff out and see what works. From my experience, the latter approach is a much better one”.

* I love this seat made out of a pallet. I took the photo above on holiday in Crete last year. I doubt the guy that made it spent hours looking over drawings or design concepts; I like to think s/he just tried it out.

2 comments:

  1. Love this post... I'm in the process of starting my company... and I keep telling myself to just do it and see what works. Much better results come out of that than over analyzing what should be done!

    I'm also a huge fan of Fred Wilson, and love that he keeps reminding entrepreneurs that it is better to try lots of things rather than try one and hope it works out. :-)

    Found your blog through twitter and have bookmarked it for further reading!

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  2. Hey, thanks a lot and thanks for taking the time to comment

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