Stop Assuming

The question is - - how much can you know about an
	extinct ecosystem, and therefore, how could you assume
	you can control it?

This is not a quote from a scientific research paper. It is actually a quote from my all time favorite movie “Jurassic Park” but what does it have to do with leadership or startups that I normally write about?

Everything

Not the whole sentence but the word assume. 2 years ago, while I was watching the movie about 20th time (Yes I do re-watch movies I like 20 times), it just made me jump off my bed and start searching and reading about this.

I hear you saying “ What you read about assuming?”, in fact, I have read any piece of article that I came across that could help me understand why we assume and there are way too many than we think there are. But I will not write about the details of why we assume, instead, i will focus assuming as one of the main factors why startups fail.

I constantly receive questions from you asking questions like “Should I start this business?” , “Do you think this industry is worth entering?” and my answer stays always the same:

What made you think you can start a business in this industry?

Answers are various but normally are:

“I have this relative, friend who is working in a big company says they make a lot of money”

“I love xxx and so I thought I can start a business on it”

And I am sorry to be the first one to tell them that their business idea, is an idea that needs to stay as one unless they stop assuming. Lets go through and check what we assume in these two sentences:

Statement1:

I have this relative/friend who is working in a big company says they make a lot of money

Assumptions:

• Your friend is in an upper management that knows what the company earns
• You / She knows what size a “big company” is
• You / She knows how much “a lot of money” is
• You assume she tells you the truth

Statement 2:

“I love xxx and so I thought I can start a business on it”

Assumptions:

• You love xxx so much you can dedicate your next 5- 10 years building a business around it
• You have all the skills needed to start a business on xxx
• You know that in this industry there is a need for your business
• You know that you can beat the existing competition
• You have enough time and money to dedicate

You see how many assumptions we do in a sentence? One of the biggest challenges in building a startup or a business is really to secure every bit of anything that you can think of. It may sound very strict yet even though you are that strict there is only a remote chance that your startup will survive the initial attempts and 2– 5-year barrier unless you have secured a continuous investing source.

So the bottom line is:

Before you move a finger, start finding your assumptions, write them up and really find out the truth behind them.

Stop assuming