Now I am sure, many of you won’t agree with me on the title of this post. I have seen enough and more talks, presentations and discussions around how Passion is the fuel for a successful startup. But I disagree. Passion is certainly a key ingredient, but it is not one of the most important one.
It is said – do something you love, then you do not have to work anymore. Reality is – when you make business out of something you love, you have to do certain other things, that you may not love so much (or at all at times), as a part of baggage of running the business. Now, this would be totally different when you are not doing this for business – then who cares if you making money or not, because ultimately you are having fun, doing what you LOVE.
My point is – Passion wears off in a few months after you start your venture which was based on your passion. Because you are no longer doing it for fun, but to build something, to make something profitable for you or and others associated with it. Pressure builds up and very soon you find yourself questioning yourself on whether this was what you really loved and if you did then why did you make it into a business?!
The funny thing in running a business, especially if you are the one who is running the show , is that you are responsible for a lot more than just the core business. Business requires you to worry about lot of things like investment, attrition rate of your employees, payment collections, months bills, monthly salaries etc. etc. And these are definitely not things that you were passionate about. The actual passion and the core of it finds itself taking a backseat.
This brings us to one of the most underrated term that we hear from the experts, forums and conferences related to startups – I believe the term is Persistence. Yes, Persistence – because just loving what you doing is not enough to make it into a successful business. You need Persistence to make it big! Why? Well because it isn’t easy to build a business – a lot of sh*t happens in the process. And to sustain it takes a lot out of you. You might be surprised that the thing you loved doing just for fun isn’t fun anymore because the business took the fun out of it. Unless, what you really love doing is running a BUSINESS, because in that case you actually love the challenges it is throwing at you. Then, it doesn’t matter what kind of business you are in till it is growing and making the money.
So what I think is Passion is overrated and Persistence is a bigger requirement than Passion in building a successful startup. But just because passion sounds sexier than persistence we give it more importance. But any entrepreneur six months into his/her business, not making the revenue projected/expected , would tell you passion isn’t the fuel that is helping them drive the business but it is persistence to make it happen.
In the end Passion can definitely help you jump into your startup but Persistence is needed to run it. Hence remember this fact Persistence > Passion while building your startup!
About the author:
Deep Malhotra is the Founder and Managing Partner of Gemini New Media Ventures LLP and Gemideals.com. Deep has over 13 years of entrepreneurial and startup experience in working & building companies like Google, Myspace.com, rediff.com and Onmag.com. Can be reached out at: deep@imgemini.com