The Myth of “Starting From Zero”
We need to stop with this ridiculous idea.
When Hamdi Ulukaya built Chobani, the media told his story as the “immigrant who built a business from $0 to $1 billion”.
They omitted the fact that Ulukaya had already been selling cheese with his 40-employee company for a while and that he had almost a decade of experience in the dairy industry under his belt.
Media companies and course sellers love to tell you about overnight successes because they sell.
Unfortunately, there’s no such thing.
Not only does being successful take time, but it also requires an “unfair advantage” that itself, takes time to build.
To quote Peter Thiel “each company is a mini-monopoly”.
No one is an overnight success, and no one starts from zero.
Absolutely no one.
No One Starts From Zero and Everyone Who Starts Has an Advantage
Obsessed with minimizing risk and maximizing success, I’ve been looking for *the* entrepreneurial recipe for years now.
I had to make peace with the fact that it doesn’t exist.
The recipe is always different, for three reasons:
- The world is in constant evolution: launching an e-commerce store in 2006 had different challenges than launching one in 2023. It also answered different needs.
- Needs change: a business is based on a need. When the need is fulfilled, a new need appears. No needs are the same. To fulfill a need that’s never been fulfilled before, one has to pave one’s way and do what has never been done. If no one has done it before you, you need to figure out how to do it yourself. This is why copying never works.
- If someone has already done it, you need to do it differently: no two businesses should be the same because as we said above, each company is its own mini-monopoly.
What does that mean?
Imagine that three adventurers have to make their way to the top of a mountain on an unchartered island.
Journalists, in their headlines, write that three adventurers will attempt to reach the top of a mountain on an island no one ever walked on. Our adventurers truly start from zero!
Right? Wrong.
None of our adventurers are starting from zero because no one would be crazy enough to attempt this adventure with zero knowledge and experience.
Adventurer 1 is fresh off Adventurer University.
Adventurer 2 recently reconverted from crocodile breeder to adventurer.
Adventurer 3 has reached three times the top of three different islands in the last five years.
Who is going to win?
Obviously, adventurer 3.
He’s been there already.
Even though he does not know the way on this new island he’s confident in his capability to succeed because he’s done it before.
All of our adventurers have an advantage.
None are starting from zero.
What’s Your Advantage?
Guillaume Pousaz is the billionaire CEO of Checkout.com.
According to the media, he built his company from zero to $20 billion, by himself.
Except that Pousaz already had experience building a financial company in the 2000s.
To do so, he had gained experience working for a Californian payment processor.
To get that job, he studied financial engineering in Switzerland.
And to get into that university, he had to study hard and be intelligent enough.
Starting from zero? I don’t think so.
Pousaz had a unique advantage at every step of the way.
Progressists call this “privilege”, but it’s a bit reductive because in this case, a privilege is not necessarily innate but can be acquired.
So let’s call it an advantage.
Whatever you set out to do, you’ll have to acquire one or several of these advantages.
I am a blond guy. Am I going to go date women who like dark-haired guys?
No. Being blond is my advantage as long as I go for the right women.
It’s my unfair advantage with blond-attracted women over all the other guys that aren’t blond.
Exploiting one’s advantages is the only way to succeed nowadays.
Figure out what are yours and double down on them.
In the case of entrepreneurship, advantages can be:
- Theoretical knowledge: you know failure is expected and you know about the Valley of Despair. You’ve learned about sales, marketing, and accounting.
- Practical experience: you’ve already tried to build a few companies before and know how it goes. You know the best practices and the mistakes not to make.
- Knowing someone who can help you out: you know someone who has done it and can help you out building the product, finding customers, etc.
- Money: you have loads of money at your disposal and can perfectly afford to fail or hire the skills and experience you’re lacking.
- Intelligence: it’s easier to solve a hard problem that pays well when you’re intelligent than when you’re dumb.
In any entrepreneurial story you’ll read, the entrepreneur has at least one of these advantages.
They didn’t start from zero. No one does.
Conclusion
Run away from any pieces of writing promising you to explain how I built my digital marketing agency from $0 to $15k/month.
These people had money, connections, experience, intelligence, or another advantage that you likely do not have.
That’s why they built these businesses, and why you didn’t.
Every business has an advantage that they use to remain ahead of the pack.
The advantage is what the concept of business is built on.
You buy bread because the bakery has a bread-making machine and you don’t. That’s their advantage.
You buy apples from the farmer because you don’t have apple trees in your garden, and the farmer does. That’s his advantage.
You buy a book because you want the learn knowledge that the author has. That’s his advantage.
A business sells it they can provide due to their unique advantage.
They didn’t start from zero.
This idea has to die.
For more articles, head to auresnotes.com.
