How do successful entrepreneurs balance extreme optimism with practical business realism?

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Accepted Answer

Hi, First off, sorry about the shutdown. I’ve been there, and it’s tough. But don't let it polish away your edge.

The thing is, you’re asking the ultimate question. Are we delusional? Honestly, yes. We have to be. If you fully acknowledged just how stacked the odds are against a startup, you’d never get out of bed in the morning. That’s why conviction is such a powerful force.

But here’s the secret: a great entrepreneur can hold two conflicting thoughts in their head simultaneously. Think of mountain biking: you need to look far enough down the trail to know where you're going, but spend most of your time looking just a few feet in front of your front wheel to avoid crashing. You need tremendous optimism to drive you forward, coupled with the cold realism that leads you to hedge your bets and listen.

But there is a limit to how far ahead you're aspiring . . .at Netflix I was never thinking about 300 million subscribers ... I was just trying to figure out how to get video rental by mail to work. And you have to be focused on those things that are close to you, since the ones that are so far over the horizon dont make any sense to spend time on.

When I meet founders, I don't trust the "we're changing the world" hype. I trust the person who has remarkable self-confidence to power on when everyone says they're crazy, but who can actually listen to reality.