Marathon running, investing, and startups
I’ve had a lot of incredible experiences in my life and hardly anything compares to the euphoria of finishing a marathon. A marathon is the culmination of months, and often years, of training. To compete well in a marathon it takes intense dedication, personal sacrifice, and a little bit of insanity. Type 2 pain is no joke!
When I’m actively training, I run 50-70 miles per week, over 6-7 days. I have a coach who writes my training plan and keeps me accountable. I run for 60-90 minutes each day, then I do the same thing the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. I generally run by myself to best fit with my schedule, and I don’t take a phone or listen to music.
Everyone makes parallels to running a marathon and building an enduring business or organization, and I believe there are a few key reasons why and lessons to learn from both ventures.
Do the work when no one’s looking. To succeed at marathon running, or at anything really, you need to tirelessly do the work, the REAL work, without any guarantee of success or an outcome at the end. You do the work when no one’s looking, when it’s just you, and your mind and your ambition.
With both running and company building, you need to have regular ‘check-ins’ to see if you’re on the right track. Before a marathon, I might run 2-3 half marathons and a 10k to assess my fitness.
With company building, it takes even more continuous check-ins. Do people resonate with the problem you’re solving? Is there a market pull for your product? Are you continuously improving the product in a way that attracts more customers?
Pace yourself. During running training and racing, one of the biggest mistakes new runners make is running way too fast. New runners might think every run should be a sprint and that you should be completely exhausted when finishing. The truth is, for more serious runners, 90% of their mileage is actually run at a very ‘easy’ pace with a low heart rate. This is counter intuitive, but running more miles, even at a slow pace, makes you faster when you race. Races are the only time you’re truly going all-out, and even then - it’s only in the last quarter of the race.
When you start a company, it’s easy to get excited and try to do everything all at once. As someone who was previously the co-founder of a venture-backed company that made many common mistakes, I can empathize. Did you raise a round? Suddenly you have capital to hire new people, to get a new office, and to buy the new software you’ve been delaying. And what is best for the business?
Some of the most successful companies today operate very quietly in stealth with very small teams for several years before they begin scaling. This gives them the confidence in the problem space they are tackling, the size of the market, and the need for their product. It also provides time to build a product and iterate very quickly.
As soon as you add new members to your team, the communication feedback slows down and everything becomes more formalized. No matter how much capital you raise, it can help to pace yourself so you have the energy and momentum to complete the marathon IPO!
Great coaches can take you far. I’ve worked with several incredible running coaches who virtually write my training plans. Not only do they provide training for me that is in-line with my fitness level, they also check in on my general health and well-being. If I’m not able to hit my prescribed workout paces and times, my coach might assess that I’m over-training or could have an iron deficiency. Stresses outside of running are also important to keep in check. At the end of the day, running should always be fun and if it starts becoming un-fun, my coach is smart to change things up and add new types of workouts or take a break.
In business and startups, it helps to have people around you who want you to succeed, both personally and professionally. This could mean having advisors, peer founders, friends, investors, and others who are watching out for you and can help you see the forest through the trees. As people become more successful, there is a tendency to be surrounded by ‘yes-men’ who are always in agreement as they want to maintain close contact to the person in power. I believe the most successful founders have teams and counter-parties who are willing to speak the truth and/or offer differing opinions in all scenarios.
Running is painful, and so are startups. There is no pain quite like the end-of-marathon pain. It’s a wrenching pain that sears through you from head to toe. All you want to do is finish the race, and once you pass the finish line and stop running, you often can barely walk as you’ve used every last cell of energy in your body. Then, within 10 minutes or an hour, you suddenly decide that running the marathon was the most amazing thing ever, and you’re ready to sign up for another one.
In startups, what we read about in the news is often the all of the ‘good news.’ Funding announcements, shiny lists, new customers, revenue milestones, executive hires, etc. etc. What you don’t hear about as often are the hard things. The things that go wrong, the challenges in building something from nothing, the top employees who quit, the customers you lose, etc. etc. There are lots of reasons why this is the case! But almost no matter what, good news travels fast, and bad news travels slowly or never at all.
All-in-all, the media will give a false sense of what building a startup is really like. Building a startup is very, very hard, and it’s going to feel like you’re climbing Mt. Everest and starting at the bottom. You’re going to want to give up many times, you’ll face a LOT of rejection, and your friends & family might think you’re crazy. It’s painful, and at the end of the day you might just experience the same euphoria as finishing a marathon.