Via Forbes

You have probably heard this story: A young visionary founder develops an idea, builds a team, raises funding and begins the almost impossible journey of creating a company out of nothing. He is faced with incredible challenges, including deep technical risk which he overcomes, and sharp competition, which he beats on his way to a huge financial windfall, adoring media and a happily ever after. The founder had a vision and he was so persistent that even when it seemed like no one else believed, he kept at it and proved everyone wrong.

You have also probably heard this story: A young visionary founder starts a company and quickly realizes that his idea won’t work. He learns from the experience and identifies a new opportunity. He pivots. The new direction gains traction and soon thereafter the company takes off. And again, a happily ever after.

Both stories have great endings.

The narrative of the startup, by conventional wisdom, praises and admires two seemingly contradictory traits: persistence and flexibility. So which is the ideal? Are the best entrepreneurs stubbornly persistent visionaries or highly flexible and reactive opportunists?

More than One Right Path

I don’t think the answer is either one or the other. This is the seemingly impossibility of the founder, the paradox of innovation. The very best entrepreneurs need to be both persistent and flexible. They need to be deeply goal oriented and not be discouraged by the distraction of naysayers. At the same time, founders need to be incredibly attuned to feedback, weed out the signal from the noise and be able to course correct and iterate.

Standing Your Ground

When I first started Thinknear, I was deeply committed to the idea of building a yield-management solution for small businesses. I heard many highly intelligent people question the idea, specifically because they did not believe a concept targeting small businesses could scale. I listened and did a lot of homework to understand the scaling constraints, but ultimately was unconvinced by the naysayers. They didn’t fully understand the space the way I did and they did not see the emergence of “mini-agencies” or channel partners who could help us scale. I listened, but I persisted.

Changing Direction

A few months later, with our business signing up significantly more small businesses than we had projected, we ran into a road bump. We could not buy the mobile ad inventory we needed to execute on our vision. I again heard many words of caution. This time, I knew the constraints were serious and highly difficult to overcome. I also saw it as an opportunity for us to pivot into solving an even bigger problem – helping brands buy location-based mobile inventory at scale. So we changed our entire business and followed what we thought was the right feedback.

Be Both

Entrepreneurs and founders need to be persistent about their ideas by listening to feedback, deeply internalizing it, and having the conviction to either keep going or the agility to react. Being persistent and flexible requires deep listening, hard work, and conviction.

If you are considering building a startup or are in the process right now, make sure you balance the need to overcome all obstacles through persistence while also being deeply attune to the constant feedback you get from the market, customers, VCs, and partners.

Be focused on your goal, but be flexible and open to feedback about the path you take to get there.