Make a dent

So I was in the operating theatre today, watching a colleague take a trainee through an inguinal hernia repair.

The conversation went a lot like this:

Surgeon: So what’s the next step?

Trainee: uhhhhh….. open the sac?

Surgeon: No (sigh…) try again….

  At the end of the operation, the trainee said: “I wish there was a good way to really learn the steps of this operation.  I think I need to go home and write them all out or something”

You could apply this phrase easily to yourself, and relate it to the “start” and “just do everything” learning points.  However, it also applies to the people that you will meet along your journey.  

You will meet a lot of people who will make big promises to you.  They may come in the guise of investors, advisors, mentors and so on.  They will all promise you greatness as long as you do something for them first.  They may say “put me on your advisory board and I can help you do X”, or “For a small amount of equity I can help you do Y”.  Let me tell you - most of them are just fishing around, trying to grab a piece of everything, hoping to jump on the next big thing. 

We’ve heard many many promises during the past few years.  Only a few individuals have actually stood up and made a difference to us. Unanimously, they demonstrated their value before receiving anything in return.   

You will hear a lot of "No" along your journey as a startup.  Trust me, as surgeons, we're not used to hearing this!  It's very easy to take "no" personally, to let it hurt, to abandon all hope - but every time you hear a "no" you should follow it up with "why?"

Each time someone tells you "no" it will be for a reason.  You may not agree with all the reasons, but collect enough of them and you will start to see a pattern - something that you can learn and improve from.  In the journey of creating Touch Surgery, we heard a hell of a lot of "NO".  To be honest, it was really hard to take.  But in retrospect, a lot of those "NO's" were actually very reasonable, and gave us excellent insight into the weaknesses of our creation.  Over time we addressed each and every single "NO" that we heard, and ended up making something much better and more successful.

I guess this is related to my previous post - "start".  When you're in a startup your resources are going to be very limited.  You won't have access to the best google coders, or the best Harvard business school minds, or the most experienced startup gurus.  You are going to have to grow very quickly, in areas that you never thought you could.