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BBQ Archieven - Startupboot

Perfection is the enemy of perfectly good

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What would be the ultimate process to launch a company perfectly? Well this question got swopped out of my head last Thursday during our Startup boot event, because I have learned that ‘Perfection is the enemy of perfectly good’.

I guess that I still haven’t figured out what it means exactly, but when you think about it there’s a certain truth to it. Perfection is when everything is flawless and could not get any better. When something is perfectly good, it is good! Something good can always be better. So, thriving for the perfectly good instead of perfection makes you able to keep growing your company by keep making it better. But for starters: Good enough is good enough.

But, how else can you prevent a failure? In a previous blog, we discussed how failure is the road to success. This is definitely the truth. You can even find your success in your failure. Does this mean that you should not try to prevent as many failures as you can though? Of course not! There are a lot of things to prevent a failure, doing your research and having a plan for starters. ‘Failing to plan is the same as planning a fail’. The second learning to catch me off guard. Off course, you need to be bold, take a risk and jump in the deep sometimes to reach your goals. Still the greater goal behind these jumps can be planned.

And what to do when things do actually go well? What if you are on your way to achieve your goals: your product is launched, it has over 10.000 users and you receive a lot of media attention? Keep in mind that things can always change (for the good and the bad). We have been told how the process of becoming a successful company, can actually cost the founders their success or even their company. In this case, the investor ended up owning 50% of the company, the vision had changed and with that, the motivation of the founders dropped. This resulted into a ‘worst case scenario’ where the founders decided to quit the company. The big lesson here is not only to keep an investor from owning half of your company, but to make sure you are prepared for anything, keep your motivation in place and be able to react quickly as an entrepreneur.

These were three learning goals taught to us by Maarten Boer, Jeroen Malotaux and Rik van Dijk during our Startup boot BBQ event at Eenvoud Media. The subject of the event was about launching a business or product, experiencing failures and turning those into success. There was one important lesson our speakers all agreed on: FOCUS!

To turn launches and failures into a success, you need a lot of things of course. Think about the product itself, a budget, a marketing plan, people and so on, but none of these things matter as long as you and your organization do not have focus. In order to make it all happen, you need to see the bigger picture and be able to focus on the important things to make your goals happen. Make sure to focus on growth and balance, not the golden ticket and you’ll find yourself achieving you finest dreams.