A Little Graduation, a Lot of Reflection
Entrepreneur Office Hours - Issue #231
This weekend is graduation for my Duke students, and, historically, this is an interesting group of graduates. The Class of 2024 is the same cohort of students who were high schooler seniors back in 2020. In fact, for a lot of them, this will be there first “big graduation,” which is kind of crazy to think about.
Beyond the strangeness of this group of students being the COVID class, the main reason I’m mentioning graduation is because I wanted to reflect on the importance of finding meaning in the work you do — whatever it is. That’s a lesson I didn’t learn until I began teaching.
If I’m being completely honest with myself, back when I was building startups, I never found a lot of meaning in my work. My startups felt more like interesting puzzles to be solved than anything that brought genuine value to my life. I didn’t really understand or appreciate this lack of meaningful personal value until I moved into teaching and had the opportunity to watch my students graduate, get jobs, and go out into the world to do important things. When those things happen, I feel like I’m actually contributing to society in a small but impactful way that’s personally rewarding.
By the way, I’m 100% not suggesting being an educator is more (or less) valuable than building startups. I’m just explaining that I’m personally getting more value from my work now than I did from the specifics startups I was building, which weren’t very meaningful companies. Even the “good” ones — in terms of valuation, growth, funding, etc. — weren’t personally fulfilling in the ways they operated or what they created.
In other words, the message I’m trying to send here is that whatever you do — whether it’s building companies or painting houses — the important thing is finding personal meaning and value in your outputs. After all, if you can’t find satisfaction in what you’re doing, why do it?
In fact, it reminds me of a strange interaction I had just this morning (for reference, I’m writing this note on a Thursday). As I was passing someone on the sidewalk after dropping my daughter at school, the person wished me a “Happy Friday Eve.”
Think about that for a moment: being excited about “Friday Eve” means getting so little value from the workweek that you’re excited about it being the day before the day before the weekend.
Mark my words: If you’re living life just to get to the weekend, it means you’re doing something wrong!
To be fair, I suspect lots of the people reading this are entrepreneurial people who already tend to be better about finding value. meaning, and motivation. But, in case you aren’t, consider this your reminder that you don’t have to give five days of your week to someone else just to enjoy two days. Find a job — or create a job — that makes you feel great about getting out of bed every morning. It’ll be the best decision you’ve ever made.
-Aaron
This week’s new articles…
The Worst Advice in Startups is “Fail Fast” — There’s a Better Strategy
Everyone in the startup world has gotten so comfortable celebrating failure that they’ve forgotten its real value.
5 Patterns VCs Use to Help Identify Founders Worth Investing In
If you spend enough time with founders, figuring out which ones have a good chance at being successful is easier than most people think.
Office Hours Q&A
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QUESTION:
Dear Dr. Dinin,
I have been an avid reader of your weekly newsletter, and I deeply appreciate the insights you share on entrepreneurship.
I recently embarked on the first entrepreneurial journey of my own with a tech startup aimed at improving accessibility in online education. As we are in the early stages, I am facing numerous challenges, particularly in customer discovery and product-market fit. I would be grateful if you could shed some light on any of the following questions:
How do I effectively identify and reach out to my initial target customers to validate my business concept?
What strategies would you recommend for iterating on feedback without losing focus on our core vision?
Are there common pitfalls in this stage of a startup that I should be wary of?
Thank you, in advance, for your time. I’m certain your advice on these topics will be immensely valuable as I enter this new stage of my career.
Warm regards,
Amir
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At the risk of coming off like a bit of a jerk (what else is new!), I’m going to suggest – in the interest of efficiency – that your first and third questions are things I cover extensively in a lot of my content that’s already published. You should check that out [NOTE FOR EVERYONE: I also emailed some specific links to Amir in direct response to his email].
But your second question is one I have some additional thoughts on.
Specifically, I want to suggest that “not losing focus on your core vision” might be something you want to reconsider.
Think about it this way: your goal of talking with lots of people and doing customer discovery work is specifically because you appreciate the value in letting the experience of others help guide your decision making process. Because of that, I would think carefully about clinging to any sort of core vision. What if your customer discovery work tells you it was the wrong vision but you’re too devoted to give it up?
My suggestion is to go into any feedback sessions specifically without a core vision. Your goal should be to use those conversations to ultimately help build the right vision.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean you need to agree with exactly what people say. In fact, for most entrepreneurs, it’ll be the opposite. You’ll likely be skeptical of other people’s suggestions. But, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hear people out and seriously consider every piece of feedback and each painful critique.
The goal here is to look for patterns. If one person says something, maybe it’s just a personal opinion that can be ignored. But, if lots of people are saying similar things over and over again, their collective wisdom might suggest you’ve created a piece of advice worth considering more carefully.
Got startup questions of your own? Reply to this email with whatever you want to know, and I’ll do my best to answer!
