From passion to startup failure

A number of good advisors and friends would tell you that the key to being successful as an entrepreneur is to do something that you’re passionate about. To me, this is incomplete advice. There is a vast badlands of failed companies out there because passion drove the business and not market opportunity. In fact, following your passions blindly can lead you to launching a doomed company.

In fact through passion you can decide to launch a company and only to find that with all of your experiences in that entrepreneurial concept you become frustrated in trying to use the available tools and resources but still end up with no success. The world needs a solution, and you strive to give it to them but still in vain.

The only problem might be that there are hundreds and hundreds of other people out there with a passion for launching the same company that you are passionate about.

They too believed the world needed a solution, and they were going to give it to them. The brutal fact is, being zealous to be a successful entrepreneur, and apparent passion for an idea is rather not enough. Passion isn’t Everything!!! By now you might be wondering it; I’m about to question if passion is an essential ingredient to your entrepreneurial journey. Wrong. Passion is critical.

It’s what gives you the fuel to work 70-hour weeks. It gives you the words to inspire your employees, potential investors and customers. It should help you sequence your Founder DNA. But much like your love life, passion can blind you in your work life. Facts are facts!! You need business acumen as much as, or even more than passion, to succeed as an entrepreneur.

I often meet people with more passion than you can imagine, but they do not have the business acumen to understand the realities of their market in order to compete. They’re not educated on how difficult it will be to launch a company. And because their first idea is often the idea they passionately pursue, they don’t realize this often means many other people have the same idea, or there’s already a robust market. They’re on a path to failure because they are blind.

Market research takes a lot of work. Many entrepreneurs don’t really research the competitive landscape--in fact they’re almost afraid to because uncovering entrenched competition or a fast-growing startup would pop their startup balloon. It’s basically self-inflicted blindness in the name of passion.

Passion is definitely an essential ingredient to your entrepreneurial journey, but so is an underserved, untapped market. Without one or the other, startups--and therefore entrepreneurs--fail. If you enter a crowded market with entrenched, aggressive competition, you’re almost destined to fail unless you develop the business acumen to uncover the market opportunity.

Knowing your market is everything. I’m not at all saying you shouldn’t launch a company in a competitive space, but rather you should know your competitive landscape and uncover the marketing opportunity before you dive head first into any startup. In fact, being very much aware of the competition, and (most likely) studying the hell out of competitors in the crowded payroll space will make it easier to uncover the warts of the market you are in.

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