
Stop Being a Wimp - aberman
http://blog.wepay.com/2010/08/stop-being-a-wimp/
======
seigenblues
Great! Glad to see we're back to anthropological alpha-maleness as a signifier
of business fitness! That's TOTALLY THE SAME as savvy planning and competent,
persevering execution. And it's worked really well for Wall Street, right?
...Liar's Poker, anyone?

Or, to put another way, he's taking "tough" and using that word to mean a
whole bunch of other traits: resourcefulness, perseverance, endurance,
motivation & ambition -- and smashing them all into the word "toughness".
Echoing swombat & enjo in this thread, yes, toughness can help you get things
done, but it isn't what lets you get things done. Nice but not sufficient.

~~~
pg
I think you are deliberately misrepresenting his post. Is there a particular
sentence he actually wrote that you believe is false?

~~~
seigenblues
Where have I misrepresented him? He's used a frame that i think is not useful
at all. It's not false -- but then again, which of his sentences are actually
facts?

For example: "I don’t think there is anything particularly new here. PG says
that the definitive description of good founders is “relentlessly
resourceful.” I’m pretty sure that “toughness” is a big part of that. Can you
take care of yourself and get (sh)it done, or are you a wimp?"

I'm pretty sure that "relentlessly resourceful" and "tough" are largely
disjoint. Likewise, taking care of yourself & getting shit done, and folding
in the face of adversity, are not as related. Why did he choose those things
as either/or? It's a strange choice. So it's not wrong, really, but it's not
really right, either.

Being "tough" can help founders be successful, but i don't think it's causal,
just highly correlated with what _are actually_ the good predictors. So the
author banging his chest and talking about how he can just hear you describing
his company as so damn tough is -- while not false -- not very useful.

or how about this: "Tough people choose decisiveness over diligence." That's
just terrifying that he would present this as a choice, and i would run away
from having him as an operator. First, it's a false dichotomy, but more
problematic is that it doesn't matter how decisively tough you are -- if
you're shooting from the hip, you'll miss. Is he trying to address analysis
paralysis? Because if so, that's a very strange choice in language he's used.

Put another way: In the post above by jiu-jitsu practitioner where he is
describing grit, i think he's absolutely right to say that grit is something
incredibly useful in non-physical arenas. As a boxer, i've watched a lot of
people get through some really brutal places. However, that 'grit' emerges
from some very different internal motivations, such as a) raw ambition to be
the best, b) a deep fear of the shame of failure, c) for the sheer hell of it,
d) because a girl is watching, and even it looked like e) from a sublime
appreciation of the present moment. (Zen boxer, totally weird) -- but they all
were able to push through places where I watch a lot of people quit, stop
working, stop pushing themselves, etc.

When Mr. Godin is talking about the importance of actually shipping software,
and the difference between people who ship, and people who don't -- he's not
framing that in terms of tough vs. wimp. Those words are pretty loaded with
anthropological baggage.

Actually, i'm finding myself repeating what api is saying upthread, so i'll
join in up there :) My real contribution is that if 'grit' is the observed
behavior, i think 'toughness' is the wrong trait to look for that produces it.

~~~
pg
See how useful it was to get specific? Now that you have to make specific
claims

    
    
        I'm pretty sure that "relentlessly resourceful" and
        "tough" are largely disjoint. 
    

we can see they're false. Toughness and relentless resourcefulness are
certainly not disjoint. Toughness is most of relentlessness. People who aren't
tough relent, because they get discouraged when things don't go their way.

~~~
seigenblues
No, they're _not_ false at all. I'm looking at _your_ definition of
Relentlessly Resourceful (RR), as understood from the essay, and _his_
definition of tough. Those two _seem_ to be vastly different.

As I went on to say, where they're not disjoint, they're probably correlated,
_not causal_ , and i cite some examples where people i know exhibited
Relentless Resourcefulness WITHOUT demonstrating the OP's definition of
toughness. (Although, perhaps they meet your definition of tough, which is why
you're quickly judging my claim as false, and we're having a miscommunication
on terminology).

I can't use your definition of tough, so i responded to his. Look at his third
sentence:

    
    
      "These guys (and gals) were not the young, sheepish,
       technical founders you’d expect. These guys are 
       operators – savvy, confident, operators."
    

Furthermore, if someone sets out to find RR but looks instead for tough,
you'll miss the set of people who are relentlessly resourceful -- but who are
still "young, sheepish technical founders." Not all rectangles are squares,
etc.

Is that definitive? Is it always true? No, of course not -- we're talking
about human properties that vary as much as humans. But I wouldn't want to
look for relentless resourcefulness by looking for toughness.

He's looking at confidence & poise as indicators of toughness. He saw the demo
day, and he's dividing people into operators and sheepish 'technical
founders'.

You may say tough as a shorthand for relentless resourcefulness. He's saying
tough to mean the opposite of geek.

So the question, i suppose, is how do you, pg, evaluate people for toughness?
The OP seems to be using a mix of posture & anthropology combined with
business benchmarks.

    
    
      "Wimps don’t really get anything done – they don’t release
      a product, they don’t make sales, they don’t raise money,
      hey balk at big problems, they quit before they should."
    

His definition of "wimp" seems totally irrelevant to actual performance under
pressure, and would be a terrible litmus test. Can you ship without ever
pushing through low points? Yes, you can ship crap. Can you make sales & raise
money without being RR? Yes, you can be lucky. Is it evident, or can you see
-- from a demonstration day! -- when people have balked at big problems or
quit before they should? Probably not!

Finally, his definition of wimp/tough might be "true" -- whatever the hell
that means -- but i find it useless, and maybe worse than useless if it leads
you disqualify many people who are RR. True/False is easy, but useful/useless
is much harder to evaluate.

A useful statement about the mental traits of founders would be nice to have.
A useful test would be even better. That's what i'm trying to get at.

------
maxawaytoolong
_...like the time my co-founder and I adopted a dog together, dropped out of
law school, and quit a high paying banking job..._

This sort of definition of "tough" seems a bit insulting to bouncers, cops and
cage fighting champions. Like how the nerd definition of "risk" is an insult
to soldiers, parachutists, and Evel Knievel.

~~~
pg
Toughness is only a partial order. There are plenty of people who would have
no problem being in a fistfight, but would be terrified at the thought of e.g.
having to perform surgery, or give a speech in front of a large audience.

I've seen plenty of people who are very tough on the axes you mention but were
unable to deal with the stress of starting a startup.

~~~
jules
So you mean that toughness is NOT a partial order.

~~~
jules
Clarification: One of the properties of partial orders is antisymmetry. This
means that for different people Joe and Jack it can not be simultaneously true
that Joe is tougher than Jack and that Jack is tougher than Joe. So it seems
to me that you explicitly say that this property does not hold.

------
stefanp
Okay, I'll be tough: this article has no value whatsoever.

~~~
enjo
Yep. Look I love platitudes as much as the next guy, but that's all this is.

My entire world is consumed with interactions with business owners (lead
generation for the service industry). We work with thousands of small
businesses, some "tough" and some not so much. To me the defining
characteristic of a successful business man is always "obsessively
analytical", not simply "decisive".

Every successful business person I've ever encountered can tell me (to the
number) the key metrics for their business on demand. They know that our
program is generating x% return on their spend. They know that we're +- y%
better than a competitor. They know everything about their business.

When you've aggressively instrumented your business and have a lot of data,
it's easy to be decisive. I've also encountered a number of business people
who are decisive, but are more or less always shooting from their gut. They
don't tend to do very well. For them everything is a guess, even if they're
_really_ sure that they are right.

Toughness is overrated. Great businesses are built by constantly trying to
assess and reduce risk. You don't do that by being tough, you do it by being
fascinated with data.

~~~
api
This is really the great insight of science: the irrelevance of social status
as a determinant of truth. Science was all about replacing mammalian hierarchy
games with observation, experiment, and reason in determining the truth.
People don't appreciate it much now, but this was really totally new. It had
never been done before.

If someone very "alpha male" thinks the world is flat, it is still round. The
universe doesn't give a shit about your status.

Neither does the market, really.

Business... or at least business done well... is a science. It's about
minimizing and maximizing and optimizing and iterating. It's about building a
good fit to a market, and lots of details.

Machismo can be beneficial in certain contexts, but it's not fundamental.
You're spot on about analytics and data-driven rational thought.

------
acangiano
"Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and
rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees
and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit
as hard as life. But it ain’t how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can
get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving
forward. That’s how winning is done. Now, if you know what you’re worth, then
go out and get what you’re worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hit,
and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you are because of him, or
her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain’t you. You’re better than that!"
-- Rocky VI (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z5OookwOoY>)

------
tptacek
Being "tough" like this increases your value to YC, but it doesn't _always_
increase the long-term value of your company.

~~~
pg
We have common stock just like the founders. How could they increase their
value to us without increasing it for themselves too?

~~~
tptacek
Easily: by being incented to take bigger risks than they need to, or to over-
commit to things.

I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm saying you're doing something wrong. You're
not. It's just how it works. It was the "burn the bridges" line that nudged me
to write this comment.

~~~
rumpelstiltskin
_by being incented to take bigger risks than they need to, or to over-commit
to things_

But that would increase their own value as well. YC and WePay are in this
together, there's never really a situation where something is good/bad for one
and not for the other.

~~~
tptacek
Not necessarily, if YC benefits from high-valuation liquidity events and no so
much from continued, steady operating returns on a standalone business.

I understand that things are blurrier with YC than they are with VC firms in
general. I know about and admire Wufoo. I know Graham has repeatedly stated
how happy he is with the Wufoo outcome. I can see plain as day the network
effect YC has created with the large number of operating businesses it has
started and with its (even larger) alumni network. I am not picking on YC with
this comment.

------
api
_"More than just the quality, I was amazed by the toughness of the founders.
These guys (and gals) were not the young, sheepish, technical founders you’d
expect. These guys are operators – savvy, confident, operators."_

Stereotype much?

In general this sort of post is vapid bullshit. Success in business comes
from:

1) Having a product or service that people want.

2) Having a way to let people know that you have it and persuade them to try
it or purchase it.

3) Having a way to deliver that product or service that costs less than the
amount you take in as payment.

That's it. Everything else is bullshit, including whether or not the founders
are "sheepish" or are "operators."

Business is actually very superstitious. There are so many factors that go
into success in business that it makes rational analysis from hard data or
from first principles hard, so people fall back on superstition. A lot of this
superstition revolves around this almost mystical notion of having "what it
takes," which tends to reduce to some notion of alpha maleness combined with
luck.

I actually had an investor type tell me once that one of the things he looks
for in potential founders is a "prominent jaw line." It was the funniest
fucking thing. I am not making this up. Very very hard not to laugh out
loud...

It reminds me of the Superbowl winner who wears the same pair of socks that he
won the Superbowl in for every final game he plays... without washing them of
course. Correlation != causation.

Superstition always causes people to make bad decisions. The big one I see in
business is that amazing amounts of money gets thrown at superficial
correlates of success and at empty cargo cultist alpha male types. Ever wonder
how CueCat got funded? Why, it was going to <buzzword buzzword buzzword> and
the founder I'm sure had a square alpha male jaw line and was very assertive.

~~~
pg
It's ironic that you describe Rich's post as "vapid bullshit" because the
problem I see in your comment is that you give such a uselessly facile answer.

Yes, sure, all you have to do to make a successful company is make something
people want and charge for it. In the same way that all you have to do to
climb Everest is keep walking uphill till you can't anymore.

The real issue here is that doing these things is in practice very hard, at
least the way startups have to do them. Doing them at the level of a service
business like, say, a sandwich shop, is easy. Doing them at the sort of scale
required in a startup is so much harder that in practice few can bear it.

We have a huge amount of data about this after funding over 200 startups. We
think constantly about the problem of how to predict which startups will
succeed. And nothing is so clear as that toughness is the deciding factor.

~~~
DaniFong
Is the toughness you're referring to the same kind of toughness portrayed in
Hollywood and Schoolyards? So much of toughness and machismo is posturing. Do
successful founders aggressively take control of every conversation and
confrontation? Do they project formidability, authority, vision and power? Or
do they cultivate the quiet, persistent confidence of a stoic? Or do you find
tough souls who react deeply and emotionally to trying situations, but are
always able to rally themselves, and renew their pursuits with redoubled
efforts, their emotional trials only tempering their resolve?

Toughness comes in different qualities and colors. Do which do great founders
wear?

~~~
pg
Resilience. They can endure misfortunes without becoming discouraged.

~~~
DaniFong
This does resonate with me. Thank you.

------
coffeemug
Great article (I suspect people that don't think it's great haven't had to
wake up every morning, day after day, for years, and tear themselves apart for
that extra inch).

One thing I find interesting is that people often call me very tough and
direct, while most of the time that's not how it _feels_. I always hesitate on
whether I'm being too wimpy, and I still get amazed that it doesn't come
through in conversations. I don't know if it's because I got lucky and have a
good pokerface where my emotions don't easily come through, or whether I am
actually not wimpy and the state of hesitation goes hand in hand with
toughness.

------
modsearch
Awesome "Any Given Sunday" reference.. here's the video if anyone hasn't seen
it. Watch it and get motivated :-) Good stuff

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rFx6OFooCs>

------
sayemm
This is a great post. This is why businesses will always kick ass regardless
of economic cycles. It's strong resilient operators who spot a unique
opportunity that make it happen throughout history. That's why a large part of
any investor's job (and also any founders' job while recruiting) is having a
special eye for that die-hard resilience and determination.

For those of you who are Buffett fans, regarding this there's a great quote by
him on page 293 of "The Snowball" (bio written by Alice Schroeder):

"Intensity is the price of excellence."

This is also probably why Andy Grove penned his book "Only the Paranoid
Survive".

------
chegra
hmm... I think the author is talking about a Sharper team.
<http://www.srds.co.uk/cedtraining/handouts/hand40.htm#Shaper>

This can be good for getting the ball rolling and keep it rolling. There are
several problems with a team like this: 1) Leads to lots of arguments and
falling out. 2) The team in unbalance, it may lack creative elements. Might
produce stuff but nothing world changing.

Start-ups have seen traits that they see as necessary for them to win. For
instance, Shopify has identified the Resource Investigator/Plant
team.<http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2378-profitable-proud-shopify> . They
only hire creative programmers. What they have seen is that creative
programmers might be slower but they make up for it by reducing the amount of
code written. The problem with this team is that rarely creativity people
follow through with stuff to the end. They like the creating part but once
that is gone they don't want any part of it.

Just a side note Shopify team would whip the shit out of wePay team any given
day. But they don't have the tough guy act going for them(Data taken from
belbin's book).

The main thing I think start-ups should realize that a lot of studies have
gone into what makes a good team. Belbin Team Role Theory is a must:
[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Management-Teams-They-Succeed-
Fail/d...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Management-Teams-They-Succeed-
Fail/dp/0750626763).

The best team is a mixture of people, not a unbalance team.

------
mansilla
"The first rule about [WePay] is you don't talk about [WePay]." <sucker punch>
Take that.

In Rich's blog, he has the fight part right. You have to fight for what you
want and what you believe in. True entrepreneurs know this, because if you
don't fight for it, what you get in return is near nothing, or zilch. You get
railroaded and sidetracked.

------
dilipd
IMHO, the guts, the brain, the heart must be tough but also flexible enough to
avoid damage & to adapt. The api needs to be user-friendly and soft(most of
the time).

