How do you begin something new?

This question is at the heart of the work of Think Do Capital. It is also the question that faces me as I write the first blog post.

I am a senior lecturer in the social impact and strategy fields at Africa’s leading business school – the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS). The founding Dean, Nick Binedell, used to remind me when I launched a new venture that “starting something new is like squeezing a watermelon pip. You never know exactly where the pip will fly, but where it lands, that is where the melon plant will grow”...

There is uncertainty involved in any new venture and there is a need to think carefully about how you start something. You never know exactly where the pip will fly.

Having launched a number of social ventures, and having been close to dozens of founders, I know from experience that there are many unknowns when starting something new. In a visit to Techstars-Seattle this was emphasized by the brilliant Chris DeVore. He stated that new venture founders need the ability to be determined and to be humble - at the same time. This balance is not easy. Founders fail if they are too belligerently focused on their solution. Their lack of humility constrains their learning. They don’t take on board enough feedback to adapt and thrive. But on the other side if founders are too humble, they can also fail. They can end up reacting to every negative comment and criticism. If they are not focused enough, they end up running in different directions and don’t have the resolve needed.

Too much determination and focus can be a barrier to impact.

My smart GIBS colleague, Prof Kerryn Myres, often tells the social entrepreneurs we work with – “Become attached to the problem – not to your solution”. In their attachment to their initial solution, founders risk becoming ‘hammers looking for nails’. Rather than looking for the best way forward, they only see their way. For this reason Steve Blank states that “Entrepreneurs who have run a startup know that startups are not small versions of big companies”. One of the critical differences between a startup and a large firm is an openness to adaptation. Catalytic new ventures operate in a world of untested assumptions where the old rules are no longer relevant but the new rules not yet clear. These new ventures must remain fluid in the early stages. The unknown must be embraced. Experimentation is key. This is why it can be dangerous for founders to get advice from the managers of large companies where stability is the norm and the status quo deeply entrenched.

But too much humility and openness to learning is also a problem.

I have just completed reading Barack Obama’s new book A Promised Land. In it he writes of his early days as a community organizer in Chicago and how this experience schooled him. He writes, “It got me out of my own head … I had to listen to, and not just theorize about, what mattered to people. I had to ask strangers to join me and one another on real life projects … I experienced failure and learned to buck up so I could rally those who’d put their trust in me. I suffered rejections and insults often enough to stop fearing them”. Obama points to the balance between determination and humility. He writes of the value of failure and what it teaches.

Hold this balance in mind as you go forward. Be determined enough to push through barriers but open enough to realize when you need to go around them.

Ant Wilson-Prangley | Think Do Capital