StartupDad: 4 Ways That Entrepreneurship Is Like Hitting a Major League Fastball – Part IV

Major league baseball and entrepreneurship.  Two things you don’t usually think of as being comparable. However, working with many first or second time startup founders, and having played baseball in college, I’ve begun to compare entrepreneurial success to hitting a baseball in the major leagues.

In the time it takes a human to blink, .4 seconds, a 95 MPH fastball will travel 60 feet, 6 inches from the pitcher’s mound to home plate.  In the previous post, I wrote about the how batters and entrepreneurs usually get more than one opportunity at bat and that, while a sense of urgency is important, so are patience and perseverance.  The fourth way entrepreneurship is like hitting a major league fastball is:

4. The odds of success aren’t good - In the pros, a batting average over .300 in a long career can land you in the Hall of Fame.  Ty Cobb, arguably the greatest hitter ever, had a lifetime batting average of .366 over a 24-year career.  What if you failed 7 out of every 10 times you tried something?  In baseball, only the best hitters in the game get a hit 3 out of 10 times at bat.   In addition, if you hit the ball only 1 out of 4 times at bat, play great defense, make clutch plays, and have a long career, you can still make the Hall of fame.  Entrepreneurship is similar.   You will fail far more than you win.  What if your first three or four startup attempts aren’t successful?  As we used to say when we were behind in the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs, “it only takes one”.

As we conclude this article series, I’d like you to contemplate this question:  Would you consider yourself financially successful if you started 10 businesses over a 40-year period, failed at 3 of them but didn’t lose too much money, had mediocre lifestyle businesses with 4 of them, and liquidity events with the other 3 that yielded a net income of $7-10M?  I would.  In addition, what if that journey provided you the opportunity to meet lots of interesting people, travel the world, help others, and bring your family and friends along for the ride?  Now that’s a Hall of Fame entrepreneurial life.

THE TAKEAWAY - Young Entrepreneurs – Expect to hit a homerun your first time at bat as a startup founder, but don’t be too disappointed when it doesn’t happen.  Remember, businesses fail, but people only fail when they quit.  Learn from the failure, nurture your contacts and mentors, continue to improve your technical and soft skills, and keep looking for that next GREAT IDEA (a slow curve high in the strike zone) that you can knock out of the park.  Entrepreneurship is a journey, not an event.  Embrace the journey and get ready for your next trip to the plate.