Conclusion

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.

—Pericles

THE QUESTIONS YOU ASK YOURSELF WHEN YOU’RE WRITING a book are similar to the questions you ask when you’re starting a venture: What kind of market problem am I finding a solution for? Who are the customers? What’s the job to be done? In our case, we wanted to write an overview of the approach we and others followed to create breakthrough ventures—ventures that not only create wealth, but also, as a first order of business, substantially improve the way people live and work.

You need not develop venture concepts and products and adapt them to the market by trial and error. We do not support this culture of failure. It involves too much uncertainty and waste; the worst waste being your own talent and time. If your goal is to really change the world, we suggest you follow the process and guidelines outlined here. To quote Mike Moritz, venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital, “Very big businesses aren’t the result of tech breakthroughs—they are the result of all ingredients: great market opportunity, business plan, value proposition, team and leadership, capital, go-to-market, and more.”¹

We didn’t set out to write a handbook just to help you get your venture off the ground. Instead, our goal was to give you a road map to help you at every stage of the life span of your company, from your first inspiration for a venture concept, to a funding meeting with a top investor, to your decision whether to execute an IPO, to maintaining a culture of innovation in your public company. Mike Moritz again: “Trying to survive in the first years is hard. There needs to be way stations, but you need to be sure the road ahead is illuminated—that there is a path you know you can walk and it will eventually broaden out to the mirage on the horizon.”

Knowing the challenges you may face on the road ahead will influence your choices and how you position yourself and your company. And hence it will shape your future. It will also shape your personal expectations. For example, the realization that a successful venture might not require you or your team beyond a certain stage of growth can be shocking, but it’s true, and it’s better to know it now rather than realize it well after you should have left. It’s even more important to realize that your role in having been part of a great company, and building it in its early days, is a great accomplishment in itself, and deserves to be both celebrated and financially rewarding.

We know that “changing the world” may seem a ridiculous, even hopeless goal, a slogan used nowadays by every would-be tech entrepreneur and start-up team. The idea was mercilessly lampooned on the HBO sitcom Silicon Valley during a parody of the TechCrunch Disrupt conference. One budding tech entrepreneur after another walks to the podium and spouts technical nonsense while promising to change the world. “We’re making the world a better place through . . . algorithms for consensus protocols,” says one. “A better place, through canonical data models for communicating between end points.” And on it goes.

Yet we still believe that changing the world is a worthy goal. Such ambition has built great companies and will continue to do so. Using the principles and methods in this book can greatly improve your odds. So here’s our advice to you: aim high, use breakthrough technology or differentiated business solutions, and build lasting companies that will profoundly transform the way we work and live.