3 lessons that founders and investors can learn from simply waiting

Photo credit: eunika / 123RF Stock Photo

Joel is a TIA Star Contributor and publishes high-value content that serves the Asian tech community. Read more from TIA Star Contributors here.

It’s natural for people to hate waiting rooms. Technology has helped us speed things up and made us far more impatient than we were 100 years ago.

However, founders and investors should understand more about the essence of this thing we call “waiting”—or as I like to call it, “spending time in the waiting room.”

Here are some of my key thoughts on the subject, from my own experience both as a founder and investor.

Delays are not always correlated with a founder’s ability

Investors in particular should understand that there are periods of delay or apparent lack of progress in business. That’s particularly true if the business in question is dealing with or developing new, cutting-edge technologies. Though founders strive to move fast, even the best ones cannot avoid some unexpected delays (e.g. Elon Musk with Tesla).

It is also not fair to assume that delays are correlated with a founder’s ability or character: business is just like that. If you invest in humans (as opposed to gods), investors must be willing to accept delays—in some cases frustrating and substantial ones—as unavoidable and inevitable parts of the process of innovation.

The reason I say delays are inevitable is because no entrepreneur can control every part of the equation, every jigsaw piece that has to come together for a good product to come to market or for a great deal to go through. Despite the genius of someone like Musk, he has still had to contend with delays to both SpaceX and Tesla, in some cases, by years. From hiring problems to supply chain issues, expect the unexpected.

What investors can do to cope with their anxiety or frustrations over delays is to set monthly meetings with founders, keep communication channels open (even if that’s over a 15-minute coffee break), and read about other great business people who have faced similar challenges.

Of course, while delays are inevitable to some degree, founders ought to still take precautions in order to limit their frequency. This might include getting second and third opinions from experts in the field, trusting their gut feelings on deals that don’t feel right, and planning for Plan B scenarios in case the primary plan hits unexpected obstacles.

Avoid unreasonably impatient investors and founders

Founders should be wary of taking funding from impatient investors. Within one to two years, they will most likely begin criticizing and blaming you because of various delays and setbacks, and push you to show quicker outcomes (sometimes by taking unethical or unreasonable shortcuts). An investor could, for example, push to lower the quality of a product in order to maximize profits.

From my experience, founders can identify risky investors before they agree to the investment by looking out for the following hallmarks:

1. They are quick to resort to litigation or legal threats.
2. They have massive egos or are overcontrolling.
3. Their term sheets are bigger than your business plan (yikes!).
4. They constantly preach on how to run every aspect of your business.
5. They are clueless about business but are perhaps from a wealthy family.

Vice versa, investors should be careful of founders who claim they won’t need to wait long for a return on their capital. Investors should avoid putting money with impatient founders who may end up creating all sorts of problems for themselves and their stakeholders due to their get-rich-quick mentalities and their inclination to take shortcuts.

The waiting room is a classroom