What cycling long distances taught me about starting up

Photo credit: William Hook

So let’s set the scene. I have always had a strong interest in endurance sports, not so much the traditional stuff like running long distances, but cycling has always been super interesting.  After a failed round-the-world cycle attempt in 2012, I kept in touch with the scene. It just so happened that another rider who is attempting an around-the-world cycle crossed my path the pass week here in Asia, and it was a pleasure to host him for a few days and trade stories.

Now cycling is pretty fun, and doing such an extreme challenge definitely has some things in common with building a startup. This is what I have come to think about more and more, and will attempt to put my thoughts down into some sort of legible prose. Here we go, strap in kids.

The daily grind

When you are riding a bike for any distance, the most important thing to do is to keep your feet pedalling. Do this, and you will make progress.

 What you don’t see about starting up is the getting up at stupid o’clock, working, and sleeping at stupid o’clock.

It is the same when you are running a startup, you need to keep working hard on it, and you will see progress come. A lot of people tend to get romanticized by the whole tech startup scene. They see the ping pong tables and free beer and think, wow this looks okay. What you don’t see is the getting up at stupid o’clock, working, and sleeping at stupid o’clock. Repeat this for all days in a row and forget your weekends. There is a reason why 99 percent of startups fail. It is hard. People often forget this.

Further to this, you are not gonna have days where you feel great all the time, or even spend your time doing the most enjoyable task. But it still needs to be done. When you are cycling somewhere, you may have hours or days on a boring ass road with no views, but it gets you to the next exciting stage. The same with a startup. If you don’t do the boring down treading foundations, then you may never experience the highs.

Startups can be a drug, and it is like nectar to reach the next high point but without the boring stuff, forget it.

Don’t make the same mistake twice

Photo credit: Guardian Liberty Voice

Startups are great because it is all about moving fast. Moving fast means that sometimes things fall apart or unexpected things happen. Learning from these things is important for your development and the professionalism of where you want to head to.

A very menial example would be charging a customer and leaving a $0 off the bill. I’m pretty sure that you would learn from this pretty quickly and it wouldn’t happen again. If it does happen again, you are losing more and more money and before you know it, you will be all out.

A lot of these things are pretty straightforward, but you will be surprised by the amount of people who make the same mistakes over and over again. Some people have too much of an ego and don’t see the errors of their ways, while some people don’t have the communication in their teams to realise that something went wrong.

Bringing the bike theme back in, over-inflating your inner tube or not checking for debris in the tyre rim after fixing a flat will soon be etched into your mind if you get another flat a minute later. Simple things, but vitally important to making progress on your startup/ journey.

Patience

Random connections can be gold

Not everyone can do it