Last week, I had the chance to talk for a few minutes with a very successful entrepreneur from the finance world. I always enjoy asking questions, especially along the lines of: How did you get started? What did you think it could be? When did you realize it was going to be a huge success? And so on.
Someone else asked, “What were the early goals with the business?” He said they were shooting to get to $5 billion to $10 billion in assets under management and thought that if they could get there, it would meet their goals and be a great business.
Today, they have exponentially more assets under management than that original goal. Reflecting on it, he said they were in the right place at the right time, benefiting from the trends and growth in the industry.
This made me reflect on some of the companies I’ve had the chance to be a part of. What were we thinking at the beginning of the startup, and how did it evolve over time?
While I would like to say that we were always shooting for the moon and planning for the biggest possible outcomes we could imagine, the reality is that we thought we had a decent idea, had some good feedback from the market, and were committed to building the best company we could.
Over time, as we signed more customers, developed more partnerships, and achieved the next level of scale, our ambitions grew with our success. We were focused on solving the next problem in front of us, truly not knowing how big the business could become.
In hindsight, the goal is to build something with enough scale to be worthwhile, interesting, and meet our personal and professional goals. Then, if we choose a good market and that market grows and matures in ways we can’t predict, there’s an opportunity to build a generational business.
My recommendation to entrepreneurs is to think through that dichotomy. Build a business that’s big enough to meet your goals, but recognize that if you get the timing right, the tailwinds right, and the market trends right, it can become something bigger than you ever imagined.
Ultimately, at the outset, you’ll never know. Part of the fun of entrepreneurship is picking a market, iterating as fast as possible, and rolling the dice that you picked a great one. But it’ll take five to ten years to know if you made the right selection.
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