Getting Back to The Art of Startup

Let’s talk about why entrepreneurs have a mandate to take giant risks and make crazy decisions.

If you read me regularly, you might get the sense that startup is a numbers game. And when I say “numbers,” you might think that I mean money. I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that. One of my missions as a relatively successful entrepreneur has been to sift through all the bullshit I’ve been told over the last 20 years and pull out the stuff that I believe contributed the most to my success. I write about it here so others don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

If I had to put all those lessons into one sentence, it would be something like: Live the dream, keep an eye on the numbers. Everyone wants to live the dream, no one wants to monitor the numbers. Watching numbers is boring. Plus they go down like 90% of the time. So it’s also disheartening.

But there’s no escaping the fact that numbers in startup are a lot like numbers in sports. Money, profit, revenue, margins, market share, and all the rest — that’s the way to keep score.

While numbers are crucial, they don’t tell the story of how we actually play the game.

The things we do to run up that score come from a mix of data and creativity, science and art. The numbers are the data, the art is the gut — taking in the knowledge that comes…