Set a reminder.
Delay helps a lot of people. Removing a decision on execution from today's pressures lets you separate mulling the question, gathering the data, and considering implementation.
This links to a core idea in personal finance: delay gratification. Sometimes one looks at one's car and thinks, "it's time to get a new one." Make your response, "next year." As a result, you will take simple steps to make your current one usable for the year. It is remarkable how this decision then leads to spending small-dollar amounts on simple service and cleaning. The satisfaction one has with one's vehicle goes way up.
Advertisers know this phenomenon - they try to make the desire for the new overwhelm this opportunity for satisfaction. But those who avoid that siren song wind up with happier experiences and more money in their pocket—all by waiting.
Waiting is often the best move in technology. Do you have to do that refactor? Can we make the existing platform last a little longer? A common reason for a significant technical initiative is "the platform will not allow X." This justifies an engineering project.
Bootstrappers often fall into this pit more easily because -beyond a gut check - they usually don't have a project review process to slow the roll toward execution. The enjoyment of a new technical challenge can be the reason to take it on. I see many almost-businesses start this way.
I also see the rush to execution or taking on more technical projects to justify idle capacity. Companies with technical staff - or a technical founder who wants to keep busy with this venture - take on more projects to "move faster." This drive is almost always wasteful and almost always negative return.
The question is not, "how do we get more value from this engineering time?" The right question is, "how can we get this time off our books?" Finding other uses for the idle capacity, such as seconding staff for six months at (or above!) cost cuts burn while market initiatives have time to work.
Raising capital is often a matter of buying time with cash. You get more capacity to accelerate the pace of one aspect or another of the business. Ideally, this is part of a return-on-equity machine, which makes raising straightforward and low-cost. However, most of the entrepreneurs I talk to are developing that machine - often literally via engineering. "I want to do this fast," I hear, and that is the reason for the raise.
In the vast majority of cases, this is a terrible reason to raise. When pushed, the time scale they are talking about is perhaps six to twelve months. How long do you think a raise will take? In addition to the costs in dilution and control, one will lose many months focusing on selling stock rather than one's product.
Plus, how much do you think you will raise in this round? What would you be able to get with six months of full-time consulting or employee work? Or could you get cash providing your current business in a more bespoke form? Perhaps none of that income would be "recurring," but you would have cash in hand to buy time. Finding meaningful, fulfilling work is best, but even driving an Uber will generate some money to buy time.
I know entrepreneurs who do this. They work a job for a year or two, save, and then make a run at an entrepreneurial venture. When that doesn't work out, they go back to a day job to restart the cycle. There is always room for improvement - the entrepreneurial products are not always well-advised - but as a capitalization plan, this is awesome and significantly improves odds of success.
Not all delays need to be so long-term. The other day, I suggested waiting three days the other day regarding a customer discovery process. An experiment generated several immediate positive responses. The temptation was to get right into it. Waiting allows the data to settle a bit and make sure the decision is downstream of the lesson, not in the midst of initial excitement. After even just a small wait, the sobriety of decision-making will significantly improve the quality of the direction taken after.
Waiting is work. A reason to move immediately is the idle capacity at hand. When one brings waiting into the mix, the idle capacity either wastes away or requires some other productive use. Generating cash for the business is a tremendous effective use! But it is often not what the entrepreneur wants to do because it is not in line with the dream.
Waiting is most effective with a clock. In the previous examples, we would second staff for six months, wait three days, and check the state of tooling in a quarter. All of these have times that the decision comes back around. The trick of setting a reminder is a trick from the Getting Things Done technique. Putting a matter into the calendar for a future date helps remove the decision from today's mind. Today's resources focus maximally on today.
Waiting is hard. But when we apply it liberally and with thoughtfulness, it increases our odds of success. And it is those odds that should drive our decision-making. But don't worry about acting on that idea today. Let it marinate for a while and consider it in a few days. I'd even recommend that you set a reminder.
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash