Keep Screwing Things Up

No need to master everything before you start. Just start!

I like to think I’m a doer kind of person. Put me in a lecture room and it wouldn’t do me any good. I learn better if I just do it, make mistakes, and learn from them. But often, I think people are very worried about making mistakes, especially here in Asia where failure is treated like some big disaster or something. It’s funny.

Ray Wu from the Lean Startup Machine recently asked me if the “Lean Startup Concept” would be accepted here in Asia. I think it would, because it is like the golden model on how you build a startup practiced by many in Silicon Valley. Accepting and understanding the lean startup model is one thing, but executing it is another. I don’t claim to be an expert in the lean startup model but I do know that to minimize loss of resources, it’s better to push your product out fast and then iterate and improve based on user data and feedback. Keep doing it so your product gets better, approaching what consumers really want.

Now that being said, the model first assumes that you’re not afraid of failure. And we know in Asia, where “face” is an important thing, we can’t really accept big failure (though things are getting better now with the younger generation). So my take is that while many folks understand the lean startup concept, people may not be actually practicing it.

Pushing out a minimal viable product could cause you to lose face. A kung fu master in a typical Chinese kung fu show will tell you that the disciple will not be allowed to go down from the mountain until he masters all the kung fu skills. The point is, it’s in our culture to be fully prepared before doing something big. And that’s gonna suck in too many resources; and poor folks like us don’t have that luxury.

Solution? Just do it. Whether it is launching a new product, entering a new market, or even a simple feature. If you succeed, good. And if not, then it’s also good. If you learn from it and quickly bounce back, you can then do it better next time. Tell that to your team members too. To fuck things up means you must have done something massive, and perhaps bold, but failed.

The journey is rewarding, regardless of the outcome. This is why we do it.

This is why we are entrepreneurs.

[Image via zhangyuanwai]