“Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow — that is patience.”
We live in incredibly fast moving times. As startup founders we are always just one meeting away from closing the deal, one email away from getting a new customer, one code check-in from releasing a new feature.
We are incredibly impatient.
“When will we hit the millionth customer?” is a question we ask ourselves the moment we launched our alpha version. When we barely have a handful of users.
“When will we finally close our angel round?” is the question I hear regularly a week after a founder has sent out her deck to the first investor.
It all reminds me a bit of kids in a car on a long drive: Are we there yet?
Understand that the process will take time. Time is measured in weeks and more often in months & years when it comes to building your company. Ignore the media which loves to tell you that everything happens in an instant. That deals are made over breakfast on napkins. That you have to be first to be successful.