The perfect is the enemy of the good. – Voltaire
Far from a sanction of shoddy work, or an excuse not to think things through, Voltaire makes an excellent point that all start-ups should pay heed to. Attaining perfection, be it in a technology or a business plan, becomes infinitely more difficult as you get closer to achieving it.
There comes a time in every start-up’s life where the CEO must decide that the technology is good enough for the market and the business plan significantly addresses the majority of the issues he is likely to face.
At that time the CEO has a choice:
- Tweak and tune the technology or business plan alone in the basement to make it ‘perfect’ (something I would argue you will never achieve that way anyway…); or
- Get out there, sell, get the market validation a company needs to grow, integrate customer feedback as you grow.
At some point every would-be entrepreneur must decide to jump into business and make a go of it – and potentially fail. Working to perfect a business plan or technology is the deceptively safe alternative. Why deceptively? Because, in the end, all you have is the unrealised down-side of opportunity cost. I have seen a number of people fall into this trap. Don’t let it happen to you. Get out there, even if what you have isn’t perfect, it might just be good enough to start a killer business.
