My favorite comedian, Mitch Hedberg, had a joke about escalators:
“I like a escalator, man, ’cause an escalator
can never break. It can only become stairs.
Sorry for the convenience.”
He died exactly one week before I was supposed to see him perform in person at Emory, but this joke stuck with me – human beings are generally so lazy, we think of a broken escalator as a nuisance, rather than an opportunity to walk up a flight of stairs.
In literal terms, sure… a broken escalator is a faulty machine, but it doesn’t prohibit a person from achieving the same goal. This leads to my escalator theory.
There are two kinds of people; those who stand on moving escalators and those who walk up moving escalators.
I’m not talking about elderly folks or those who need physical assistance going from one floor to the next. For them, standing on an escalator is a fine alternative to an elevator. I’m also not talking about adolescents, who playfully sprint up escalators that move downward and shuffle down escalators on the rise. I’m talking about the fairly healthy human being who chooses to save a few ounces of energy by densely staring at the ascending horizon of folding stairs.
This theory holds commensurately true for entrepreneurs. In the context of how many start-up companies fail each year, few founders are lucky enough to find themselves on an escalator to begin with.
Starting a tech company is a grueling, exhausting, frustrating and patience-testing process… and then at the end of this journey, you wish upon a star with your fingers crossed so hard, your knuckles fuse.
The beginnings of success in a start-up are partly attributed to the combination of sweat, tears, and in the case of those who had to build their own furniture, blood, but it’s also partly luck. When the odds fall in your favor, when the great concept you’ve been working so hard to see succeed actually perfectly meets the great fortune of solid market timing, you pat yourself on the back and then thank the uncontrolled forces of nature that magically made all of your hard work fruitful.
The more abbreviated maxim would dictate that success is when preparation meets opportunity. And opportunity is luck.
The fact that an escalator is moving you upward doesn’t mean you should stop walking. You shouldn’t get comfortable at the first signs of success or the first trickle of revenue into your company’s coffers. Complacency is the most dangerous quality for a budding entrepreneur… and it’s what separates Jokers from Kings in the deck.
Brand Knew’s investment strategy focuses on the entrepreneurs at the helm of an idea. Ideas often change over time; sometimes because market conditions have changed. People and their practices rarely do. The most important asset to a young company is the determination of the founder—close second is the team they’ve surrounded themselves with.
The most successful start-ups are run by entrepreneurs who push even harder at the first signs of success. There are those who ride momentum and those who insatiably push forth with the good grace of momentum as their tail wind. It is the defining and differentiating factor between those who achieve success and those who achieve greatness.
There are countless instances we’ve witnessed over the years, both internally and externally, where founders have become victims of their own complacency. But it’s something really special when entrepreneurs pay no mind to the press or the accolades or the hype surrounding their first big deal or the employees on a collective natural high or the myopic investors congratulating them on a job well done. This isn’t to say that operators shouldn’t enjoy the journey. It’s all about the journey. The focus should simply be on progress, while keenly enjoying the peripheral.
There’s also a fundamental difference between those who hold the rails and those who realize there’s no reason to touch them. Most physically healthy people don’t rely on side rails when walking up a staircase. Just because an escalator is a moving staircase, doesn’t make a person less balanced or capable. Not to mention that escalator rails are the most disgustingly filthy public surfaces, third only to gas pump handles and postoffice mailbox handles. Entrepreneurs who fearlessly charge forth without training wheels or bowling bumpers are the ones who achieve greatness, of course with consideration for the advice of others and respect for the experience of those who came before them. A great deal of self-confidence and a certain amount of foolishness are necessary to battle the inevitable set-backs, competition and nay-sayers. Fearless hearts drive concepts to the edge of opportunity and well beyond.
Very few “entrepreneurs” catch a ride on the escalator; even fewer succeed… and even fewer than that achieve greatness. Next time you see someone standing on a moving escalator, remind them that the Earth’s rotation is not a substitute for progress.