This past week I sent an email to one of our portfolio companies, PBwiki, that really demonstrated the daily grind that is life at a start-up. Every day you have to find a way to make progress and move the ball forward. Here is the meat of email:

Everyday you have to find a way to make progress. Improve your product. Improve your support. Attract that new client. Make a new line, and move the game forward.

One of the most important of Yeh’s Laws of Entrepreneurship is simple but universal:
Get someone else to do the work.

I’m not advocating laziness in entrepreneurs–entrepreneurship is hard work. But you have to realize that hard work is insufficient.

Even the most dedicated entrepreneur is hard-pressed to work more than 12 hours per day. That’s only 84 hours per week, assuming you never take a day off. And towards the end of those long days, I’ll bet our workaholic entrepreneur would be working at only 50% effectiveness–or less.

In contrast, if you simply get three reliable people to work for you 40 hours per week, that’s 120 hours of productive work, in addition to whatever you get done.

It often seems like young entrepreneurs think that working ridiculously long hours makes them morally superior. All it really makes them is tired.

Professionals work hard, but understand that the real key is figuring out how to get others to do the work.

So many times when you are at a technology start-up you get caught up in the day-to-day drudgery of trying to make incremental progress. While it is essential to make the tactical decisions and efforts, you have to understand that you are doing something great. Only in making the world a better place (no matter how small a part of the world you are affecting), will you really create value. This thought was on my mind in an email I sent to one of our portfolio companies, PBwiki, this week:

John Wooden is famous for saying, “Be quick, but don’t hurry.” Unfortunately, it’s hard to act on this Yoda-like utterance. That’s why I’ve rephrased it (glancing nervously at the sky, hoping to avoid a lightning bolt) in my own words:

Be decisive, but don’t rush in.

Sports is one of the most popular metaphors for business, along with war. Famous players and coaches can make a mint off of books and speaking engagements. The same holds true for successful generals.

But here’s the funny thing–a lot of ex-athletes and ex-coaches (as well as ex-soldiers) have failed in the business world. Not all of them–just look at the success of guys like Roger Staubach and Magic Johnson, as well as military men like AG Lafley of Proctor & Gamble–but more than the general population of folks with similar advantages (rich, famous, well-connected).

It’s not because athletes or soldiers are unintelligent; many are smart and capable. The problem is that their instincts are ill-suited to business success.

The business world operates on a different time scale than sports or combat. How often do we talk about how fractions of a second separating victory and defeat or life and death? For athletes and soldiers, reflexes and instant aggressive reaction are the keys to winning.

I’ve been in the business world a long time, and even during the era of “Internet time” I cannot recall a single instance where a fraction of a second meant the difference between success or failure.

Be decisive, but don’t rush in. It’s rare that time frames less than a day matter, and unheard of for time frames of less than an hour.

When something happens, take the time to make the right decision.

This is not an excuse for dithering…being decisive and aggressive is incredibly important to business success. But recognize that whether you respond to that proposal in 1 second or 1 hour generally doesn’t impact your options and that you can come up with a much better decision in an hour than you can in a second.

Rather than thinking of business as sport or war, think of it as chess. Every move must have its purpose. Make the right decision.

On a visit to one of our portfolio companies I was struck by the amount of progress that was being made. Every front — sales, engineering, finance, customer service, and marketing — were making daily strides. And when I left I sent the team this email:

I spent a few weeks in the HQ, and I was left with a thought of great progress. Every functional area is making great progress on building a world-class, second-to-none SaaS delivered collaborative solution. This made me think of a Latin phrase that I have used in the past: nulli secundus. This means “second-to-none” and is really the goal we have set as a company.

Often companies put their emphasis and focus on monetary goals, e.g. profitability or sales numbers. And while these are great and important, the striving to greatness is really the key. If everyone in an organization is focused on building an amazing company/product, the monetary results will follow.

“Nullis Secundus” should be the catch phrase for any start-up.

If you want to be an entrepreneur, one of the skills you must learn is how to deal with authority.

On the one hand, if you listen to advice from authority figures, you’ll never become an entrepreneur.  Too risky.  Too much of a long shot.

On the other hand, if you decide that none of the old rules apply, you’re likely to end up like the dot-bomb entrepreneurs who thought that they were immune to old-fashioned economics.

Entrepreneurs have to walk the middle path of respecting, but not obeying authority.

Respect authority for its implied wisdom and experience, but recognize that it is far from infallible.  Authority thought Wilbur and Orville Wright were insane for thinking that man could fly–even after they had done it!

Listen carefully to what authority has to say, and if you have good reasons for disagreeing, ignore it and do what you think is right.

In the end, even if you’re working within a larger company, disobeying authority can put you on the fast track to success.

Authority makes rules for a purpose–to get results.  If you get results, you can rewrite the rules.