Perseverance

A few hours ago I was yet again reminded of my grandiose act of philanthropy, when I received a backers’ update from Kickstarter. The update was related to a project I supported a few months ago, called LightUp: Learn by Making. Since it had been a while from my last update from either LightUp or the other project I’ve supported, Coding for Entrepreneurs, I was initially a bit confused as to what the unfamiliar ‘K’ icon on my phone’s notification message signified, before I remembered about the Kickstarter app I downloaded a while ago. After the few moments of confusion gave way to recognition, a barely articulated thought flitted through my head; it consisted of something along the lines of ‘funny, I didn’t realise they were still in business’. It was only after I had thought that that I realised I had unwittingly learned another valuable lesson about entrepreneurship. Namely that it takes more than just vision, courage, initiative, a desire to shake things up and any other of the glamorous, heavily overemphasised entrepreneurial qualities before you will be successful. Of course those qualities are important, but I realised that what matters more than all of those put together is the power to stick with something, one thing, to the very end and for as long as it takes. It can be very easy to come up with a good idea, but what is rare is to believe in it to the extent where you are still committed to it six months, a year, two years, and even longer down the line.

It is thus important to have the desire, the drive to innovate and disrupt, but at the same time that needs to be tempered with persistence and consistency. Yes, you may even want to be a serial entrepreneur with your creative finger in lots of innovative pies, but you need to remember that before you can be serial, you need to be an entrepreneur. As I slipped my phone back in my pocket I wondered whether I would have the sheer perseverance to stick with the same idea and the same business for so long. That’s a question that every budding entrepreneur needs to be able to answer before they set out on their own.