As a 20-year entrepreneur and 10+ year advisor, I see this happen all the time. For every founder that is all head-over-heels about a crazy idea that may never work, there’s another potential founder who actually has a viable, executable, potentially game-changing idea that they don’t act on, because they think they’re not equipped to bring it to reality.
Maybe they’re not, but it kills me that they don’t even try. And nine times out of ten, it’s because they’re afraid of asking stupid questions.
Society conditions us to keep our mouth shut until we know what we’re talking about. And I can see where this makes sense. We live in an age marked by an unlimited number of platforms where anyone can spout off passionately about things they know next to nothing about.
But innovation doesn’t work like that. In fact, it thrives on the opposite. One of the quickest paths to entrepreneurship is when a person looks at something that’s been done the same way forever and starts asking why.
- The person doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist.
- They don’t have to have connections.
- They don’t even need a background in the thing they’re questioning.
Teaching Startup is built on the premise that there are no stupid questions about becoming, being, or succeeding as an entrepreneur.
Over the last six months, we’ve answered questions as simple (and complex) as “How do I create a sales pitch deck?”
But remember too, entrepreneurship doesn’t have a linear learning path. In fact, yesterday’s issue featured a simple question about creating your first investor contact list — and I learned something from that answer. I already have investor contacts. Hell, some of them are probably reading this post right now. But I still took away something I can use.
You never stop learning to be a better entrepreneur. Any successful entrepreneur will tell you that because knowing that is what helped make them successful.
So yeah, if you’ve got stupid questions, you’re probably no different than any entrepreneur, from the newest founder to the one who’s exited a few times already.
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This article was originally published on Medium by Joe Procopio
Joe Procopio is a multi-exit, multi-failure entrepreneur. In 2015, he sold Automated Insights to Vista Equity Partners. In 2013, he sold ExitEvent to Capitol Broadcasting. Before that, he built Intrepid Media, the first social network for writers. You can read more and sign up for his newsletter at www.joeprocopio.com