Jason Droege: prediction

Transcript context

…Talk about that. Tech is a culture where portfolios are built by investors, and a lot of the narrative is controlled by investors frankly. Founders obviously participate, but this idea that you should just go for it is consensus. Just go for it. Who cares? Well, I don't know, if it's my life and I only have one moment to take a shot, I might want to just not just go for it. I might want to think for a little bit, and I think the best entrepreneurs, I have no data to back this up, but just these are my friend, this is my friend group. I think the best entrepreneurs and the best business owners look at the risk profile of the decisions that they're making and they try to make asymmetrically positive decisions all along the way. And so, oftentimes I feel like we forget about the risk of a decision, and there's more to unpack there because I actually think taking highly risky decisions and then having it work out is a weird cultural thing too, because then how do you train people to do that? Because it's a very hard thing to take high risk decisions and be right enough because it creates a lot of volatility. But it goes back to my comment about the most important thing in founders, which is just this ability to persevere through. Survival is just part of the game, and most people just give up before they get their timing right, before they get the right insight with the customer before they get the right product in the market. And life can change quickly in tech. You can go from being a dog to being a hero in a very short period of time, but you're on this very, very long journey, but you have to survive for that condition to be met. And so, then the question is is when you're in a hype cycle, I would argue that we are right now, everyone wants to go for it and then go for it more and then go for it more and go for it more and you don't realize, guys, all of our customers are going to be around in five years. They just want us to solve their problems. We have to be around to solve their problem for them. And so, survival is a precursor to that. So let's not put ourselves in position that could potentially compromise the enterprise along the way. It doesn't mean don't take risks, but think about how you calculate it. I love how clear it is that this lesson and many of the lessons along these lines have come from just failure and things not working out and things breaking, which is the best outcome.…

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