On Shared Experience

Depending on when you start the clock, I’ve been an entrepreneur for close to 18 months, and I’ve already learned a lot.  Someday I may share the full breadth of these experiences, but I’ll save that for another day and another publication.

But here’s one thing I’ve known from the beginning: being an entrepreneur is tough and you’ve got to be ready for some bumps and bruises along the way.  But like an athlete with a sprained ankle, a bad shoulder, and a bruised elbow, you want to be on the field no matter what.

I think I’ve known that from the beginning.  I must’ve.  If it wasn’t incredibly challenging, I probably would’ve gone and tried something else.  (Similar reasoning led me to MIT.  I’d encounter students at other good schools on college visits that would try and talk me out of going to MIT by saying “oh, it’s really hard.” Made my decision clear.)

But when you’re facing a constant challenge (and in life in general), there will be hard times.  This is a brutal fact.  But in hard times, there’s a valuable weapon humans seem to have: shared experience.

I’m not sure I’ve come to the full understanding of this phenomenon. But for some reason, when we come across hard times, knowing that others have faced the same difficulties is relieving, almost cathartic I’d say. I’d say a major part of it is knowing that you aren’t alone.  Another part of it may be knowing that someone has it just as bad or worse than you, which makes us value what we have.

Several months ago, I wasn’t sure exactly how I would be able to a) eat and b) continue to work on the project I’d already put months into.  I tangibly had next to nothing except for clothes and a lot of debt.  Now, rationally, I knew I’d be fine, as I had an MIT degree, a great family, a powerful personal network, and no absolute obligations (such as mouths to feed).  But, nonetheless, it was a worrisome situation at some point.

But around that time, I came across a book by Jessica Livingston called Founders at Work.  The book contains Jessica’s interviews with 32 (now well-known) entrepreneurs and their personal stories about building their respective companies. One of the highlited individuals was Evan Williams, the founder of Blogger and now Twitter.  Evan’s story goes something like this: founded company with team, grew team, made friends, got some money, ran out of money, lost entire team, lost friends, got sued by members of team, pushed the company ahead by himself and started rebuilding.  It was pretty bleak at times for Evan.

That story got me recharged in a heart beat.  But I don’t think it was just the fact that it was a good story with a happy ending (Blogger got acquired by Google).  I think it largely came down to the power of shared experience.

Kevin
7.16.2009