AddressTwo: From Concept to Company
March 8th, 2011
By Nick Carter
This post is by Nick Carter, author of "Unfunded: From Bootstrap to Blue Chip Without the Fuel of Round-A Capital." This is the story behind the story, untold tid-bits that didn't make the book's final cut.
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For every great idea someone has parlayed into a great company, there are dozens of people who claim to have thought of that very same thing. “I had that idea years ago,” they say as they await your sympathy. But for me, I have no sympathy to give for the self-proclaimed idea-man. Why? Because the simple fact is: an idea is not the end, it is only the beginning. What marks great entrepreneurs is not their ideas, it’s their execution.
I say this because, as an entrepreneur, I’ve failed over and over again, and rarely because the idea itself lacked creativity. Whenever my business endeavors have not been met with glowing success, it was because I didn’t see them through. I didn’t execute. And, not to demean myself too harshly, it was not because I was lazy or short-sighted. The reason is simple: execution is hard. Taking a mere idea and turning it into a company is not fast. It is not without great struggles. And it is all too easy to abandon.
So, how did I take AddressTwo from concept to company? What was different this time? And, most importantly, what can others learn from it?
First, the concept of AddressTwo centered on my own core competencies. This important fact cannot be overlooked, nor can its importance be overstated. If you spend your energies dreaming of business models for which you do not possess the simple know-how to carry out, you will have a career riddled with dead-ends and quick failures. Starting a business is hard enough, but when your startup is dependent on others’ talents to get the idea off the ground, it’s nearly impossible.
In chapter 2 of Unfunded, “The Art of Bootstrapping,” I recount a presentation a venture capitalist once gave to a group of eager entrepreneurs. In his presentation, he listed the automatic disqualifiers for any management team seeking funding. First on the list: a team void of production skills. If you cannot create your initial product, then venture capitalists—arguably the riskiest investors in the financial world—won't take the risk on you. And if they won’t invest in you, you should reconsider whether this is the place to invest your own hard-earned capital.
But even entrepreneurs who are truly jacks-of-all-trades fail. I have failed startups on my résumé where I did possess the core competencies to get to market. What was different between those previous failures and the eventual success of AddressTwo?
Patience.
Perhaps the patience I had with AddressTwo was actually a product of having prematurely abandoned my earlier ventures. I’m self-taught in almost every aspect of my professional abilities, which means I typically learn through bumps and bruises. As I asked myself what went wrong in the past, one thing became apparent: I really hadn’t spent much time on each of my previous ideas.
I had the false notion that success would be easy—that ideas bred businesses—and it took failing to finally realize that execution was the key. I finally accepted that the idea wasn’t enough. I had to dig in and get to work turning concept into a company.
If you have a concept, that’s good, but it is only a start. Those who would rest on their concepts alone are destined for disappointment. Business is built by doing. Now, get busy doing.
To read more about Nick Carter’s framework for startups, visit www.gounfunded.com/unfunded-book/.
Nick Carter
