Does your market fits you?
Is there a chosen one?
No MBA involved
Was James Dyson, the inventor of the famous vacuum cleaners, the smartest guy in his batch? No, but he was the guy who failed 5,127 times and persisted, revolutionizing the vacuum cleaner through relentless iteration.
What about Steve Jobs, hailed as one of the most iconic creators of the last century? Did his unparalleled ability to create great art make him famous? Not at all. Jobs, the man who knew how to sell not just a product but a lifestyle, wasn't the most proficient coder or hardware engineer. He triumphed because he presented the Apple brand as an extension of his persona, tapping into the natural human desire to own something unique, something beautiful.
And Michael Gronager, CEO of Chainalysis - is he the smartest crypto computer scientist of his era? I doubt so; he's not even a computer scientist. However, he is the visionary who saw a pattern amidst the cryptographic chaos and crypto-related fraud cases. While others focused on developing cryptocurrencies and scammy Ponzi schemes, Gronager made his mark by understanding and tracking them, carving a niche in compliance and security. He didn't need to outsmart every cryptographer; he needed to see the bigger picture that was invisible to others in the blockchain frenzy. He did not beat the competition; he just made it totally invisible by creating his own league, a league relying on nothing else than his specific knowledge and his will to build a needed product nobody else could build better than him.
The same answer applies to all: No, the best founders weren't the smartest in the conventional sense. They got no top grades from any silly MBA or business degree and were not publicly praised by some scammy publications. However, they were all following a tough but honest path, considering who they are, what they like, and what feels like play to them and work to others 1.
Founder-market fit is about finding where you can win at being yourself, and even better, where you can win at being yourself where nobody else is going.
Ex-post prediction
Let's not fall into the trap of ex-post prediction: looking back and thinking everything happened in the only way it could have, making past events feel easy to predict even though they weren't 2. Successfull founders look like the obvious winners after the fact, but weren’t at the time they were building the foundations of their company. Ask them directly, or read their biography : none of them felt pretty much anything else than terror and fear to lose before the company became a major success, or just a success.
This is where it gets tricky: how do I know I'm the right person to tackle this specific problem? In my humble opinion, the answer isn't so much about skills—though starting with a strong skill set certainly gives you a huge leg up. The most significant factor is actually quite simple.
Do you enjoy the problem you're solving? Is solving this problem fun for you? And do you truly believe that your solution will improve the lives of those who purchase it?
Paul Knight, the founder of Nike, shared an insight he had almost five years after creating Blue Ribbon, Nike's original name. He was determined to sell his shoes, whatever it took, because he believed the world would be a better place if people ran a few miles each day. Knight was passionate about the problem, being an accomplished runner himself, and was emotionally invested in the solution: providing affordable running shoes. His love for the issue at hand and belief in the change it would bring were what drove him. So, it's not just about the ability to solve a problem, but a deep, personal connection to both the problem and the solution that makes all the difference.
Herd mentality, collective grave
If you've read other articles on this blog, you know my approach often leans more toward identifying what not to do rather than obsessing over making the absolute best decision or chasing the latest hype.
For founders seeking that mysterious founder-market fit, here's a surefire path to failure: diving into a startup simply because it's the fashionable, hot topic of the moment.
I cannot stress this enough: don't be one of those entrepreneurs who jump on the bandwagon of creating a FinTech company just because it's a sector filled with dumb money3, or who rush into developing a generative AI startup solely because some bad investors will fund it. You will fail, badly.
VCs might shower you with endless funds, but that won't lead to success because founding a company is inherently improbable, and unlikely. If there's no genuine curiosity about the problem you're tackling, you won't gain the deep knowledge needed to build a viable solution or feel authentic empathy for your users4.
The minute somebody shows up with founder-market fit, you will explode5.
Conclusive aphorisms
Don't start your venture like a sheep
Do what everyone does: regress to the mean.
In entrepeneurship, the mean is bankruptcy.
Follow dumb money: become as dumb as the money
Serve customers you don't care about: provide horrible service, and lose to better suppliers
Ignore your passion: die quickly and bored
Chase trends, not solutions: be a sheep, and regress to the mean again
Keep the faith,
Voss
Naval Ravikant’s formulation, not mine
That's what MBAs and McKinsey/BCG consultants do. They tell you the best poker strategy after the flop has been revealed
VCs, in other words. A lot of them.
The most important thing if you ask me. I stopped working on some projects because I thought my users were boring. No empathy, no selling. I have to love my customers.
Example of Netflix VS Blockbuster case : As the new millennium began, home movies changed forever with Netflix challenging Blockbuster. Blockbuster, big but stuck in old ways, didn't take Netflix's $50 million offer seriously, missing the internet's power. Meanwhile, Netflix's boss, Reed Hastings, saw a future where people would prefer streaming over DVDs. They focused on making watching shows and movies easy and fun, the rest is history.