Entrepreneurial lore is rife with odes to hunger as a foundational necessity of success. Hungry founders are commended as the ones desperate enough to do whatever it takes. Hustle the gullible, bend the law, persevere through endless death marches. Whatever it takes.
But is desperation really the best foundation to build the kind of sustainable and long-term businesses the world benefits from the most? Or, is it rather a cheap trick to juice the odds of a short-term pop to the primary benefit of those who are only ever along for a quick ride?
I believe the latter. That it’s key to a narrative that serves those who extract their riches from the startup mining shafts — venture capitalists.
That’s what really gets to me. Champions of hunger-as-a-badge-of-honor are usually the fattest cats in the land. Extolling the virtue of an empty stomach is unsurprisingly easy when it’s something for others to endure.
And what a rotten virtue in any case. Poor decisions are the natural consequence of an empty stomach. Hunger has a Maslowian way of placing itself on the top of your hierarchy of needs. Whatever focus is gained through the tunnel vision of hunger is quickly overshadowed by the accompanying disregard for all else.
It’s the incarnation of short-term priorities. Primal neural pathways taking over. Fight or flight at every encounter. And not just for the time it takes to get to the first taste of success. Habits formed from hunger, like any other habits, gleefully outlive their founding context, and continue to govern behavior long after it is gone and forgotten.
It need not be this way. It’s not only entirely possible, but vastly preferable, to set off a new venture on a full stomach. Building the new not because of a perceived existential threat if you don’t succeed, but simply because building the new is intrinsically rewarding.
It’s also that much easier to keep your moral compass calibrated and pointed in a sustainable, healthy direction when you can focus on your own thoughts and not a growling stomach. It’s how you build businesses and organizations that aren’t just about fulfilling your own personal and immediate needs, but instead bring about respect – possibly even admiration – from customers, employees, founders, and perhaps even competitors.
Hunger is a stick for nobility to beat peasants into submission. Mistaking its abuse for inspiration is an entirely avoidable travesty. It’s time to pick another source of motivation for starting new businesses.
Adam Thomas
on 30 Jun 15I have always hated the term “hungry”. Seemed desperate and unprepared.
Desperation breeds mistakes. You can’t think clearly. Every choice seems to be the right one, until it isn’t. You disregard systems. You hoard information. Everyone becomes an enemy unless they are an ally. Everything becomes black and white in a world of grey.
I loved this line
“Hunger is a stick for nobility to beat peasants into submission. “
The want of “hunger” allows the subject to be taken advantage of. Great post DHH
David Lukauskas
on 30 Jun 15What if there is no better motivator than hunger and the fat cats are fat because they have learned through experience that there is no way around it, so they want to make sure that the venture is set for success. There can be lot’s of examples across the spectrum and situation like health care where it may be counterproductive and dangerous to have a hungry founder, but if I had to bet on a portfolio of 100 companies with hungry founders vs comfortable ones, I’m sure they hungry ones will do better.
Piotr
on 30 Jun 15Best post to date, David, meaning the one I’ve enjoyed the most so far! Something feels different yet the same in the way you express yourself. Brings back thoughts from the ‘Punished By Rewards’ book.
Blissex
on 30 Jun 15«Poor decisions are the natural consequence of an empty stomach. Hunger has a Maslowian way of placing itself on the top of your hierarchy of needs. Whatever focus is gained through the tunnel vision of hunger is quickly overshadowed by the accompanying disregard for all else. It’s the incarnation of short-term priorities. Primal neural pathways taking over.»
This is argued with several experimental and field examples in an excellent book on “Scarcity” by S Mullainathan and E Shafir as a general situation: human minds pay overwhelming attention to their biggest worry, and this reduces performance in everything else. You may have read it, but if not I recommend reading it as it may change considerably some ingrained ways of thinking.
Taiwo
on 30 Jun 15I think there is bias here. If I’m wrong, let me know pls. Most of your venture explorations are B2B not B2C. In B2B, hunger as a badge of honor isn’t an issue. While for B2C ventures , competition is tighter, monopoly is harder, the noise is too much and you have to play at the extreme to take the stage. You have to be hungry man.
Jason
on 01 Jul 15Sorry, this misses the mark. Yes hunger makes you focus and for some people they’ll compromise good values and judgement to survive. However, that same hunger forces exactly the creativity that unleashes great ideas.
I have worked at venture backed startups and bootstrapped my own businesses in “hunger mode.” What I found was the venture funding makes you soft; you ignore the metrics of your business just a little bit because you have time. It’s easy to take advice like “go for growth, don’t charge yet.”
Yet when you suddenly realize you have to make enough money to make rent, pay employees and bills, you start looking at your numbers with more honesty and urgency. You get creative and try many approaches. It’s often then you fix the kinds of things preventing you from succeeding. If you were comfortable, maybe you’d get there eventually but it would cost a lot of money.
Most entrepreneurs start the first time with very little, so the option is to be hungry and figure it out or what you’re really saying is that only the rich can start a business. That’s not the American way. That’s not how so many self made successes in this country got there and learned the discipline that made them succeed at scale.
Joshua Pinter
on 01 Jul 15The most eloquent and reflective post yet, David. And it’s in tough competition from some honest posts in the past.
I’m glad you mentioned Maslovian characteristics because when you think at higher levels than the basic survival requirements you are able to conceptualize and build sustainable company for the long term, not short-sighted gambles in zero-sum games.
Nice one.
Joshua
Ted
on 01 Jul 15People have this WRONG notation of venture capitalist. So let’s clear it up…
There exist a SMALL SUBSET of business in the world that for them to work, they need CRITICAL MASS. And to get to critical mass, you need to INVEST HEAVY.
Business owners don’t have the funds available to make that heavy investment, so they need a lender. Problem is, Banks don’t want to lend to someone unproven, so the business owner turns to a venture capitalist who is willing to take on that risky investment in turn for high returns.
Now let’s give examples of businesses that require heavy invest in order for them to work:
- Keurig, yes Keurig. The business model of this company is to license and sell the daily replaceable KCUP coffee. But to get into that business, the owners needed the world to purchase the Keurig coffee maker. How do you do that, they needed MASSIVE INVESTMENT of marketing and even subsiding the cost of the Keurig coffee maker to gain critical mass where you have you population of users buying KCUPS. Think of it a different way, how likely are you as a coffee drinker going to drink KCUPs if you can’t purchase a Keurig. And how likely are you going to buy a Keurig if you can’t find KCUPs? You need a critical mass and to get that, you need to make a huge capital investment in the marketplace to gain it.
- Uber. How useful would this service be if it was only in a single city with limited available drivers? It wouldn’t be. So Uber realizes they need to make deep investments to expand to all major cities AND potentially even overpay driver to use the service in order to make the service useful to the end rider. How do you do this … you have to make heavy capital investments in acquiring drivers and expanding into cities.
So, let’s be clear – venture capitalist satify an important market. It’s for business owners who need to achieve a critical mass to make their product/services profitable and useful. But bankers won’t lend to these business owners because it’s an unproven business and too much risk. So instead, VCs are willing to take the risk because the reward could be huge.
Justin Jackson
on 02 Jul 15The research here is clear: hunger (desperation) decreases cognitive ability. More here: http://justinjackson.ca
Kevin
on 02 Jul 15I think this is a good example of where people are polarizing to the extremes. “You have to be desperate to fight and hustle for success” vs “You need to be comfortable to think clearly.” It seems to me that there is probably a sweet spot in between where you keep yourself uncomfortable enough to push and hustle but not having to operate in desperation mode.
Another point that’s a little hidden in there is where he talks about making something because it’s intrinsically rewarding and not just because you’re looking to dominate an industry/get a fat exit/become famous.
This discussion is closed.