Introduction

The launch path

Introduction to the Course

Late one evening last year, I was enjoying a glass of wine with my friend David at his home in the hills above Silicon Valley. We’ve both been involved in the startup world for most of our careers—David became a venture capitalist while I stayed on the entrepreneur path, but we each spent much of our careers hunting unicorns (startups with billion-dollar valuations).
Yet here we were, sipping a delicious Rafanelli Zinfandel and talking about Mittelstand, the German term describing decidedly non-unicorn companies that form the rock-solid foundation of the economy. 

Mittelstand companies are small-to-medium in size and privately owned. They have strong local linkages, grow prudently, and use conservative long-term financing—so pretty much the exact opposite of the “burnout or bust in the pursuit of billions” ethos that many people associate with Silicon Valley today. 

The conversation that night is part of the genesis of this book. The fact is that 98% of all successful businesses have never raised any venture capital and most are rock-solid members of the Mittelstand. Yet I’ve seen young aspiring entrepreneurs spend months doing nothing but working on their pitch deck, thinking the only way to move their startup idea forward is to meet a venture capitalist. To me, that’s crazy.  

Over my several decades in Silicon Valley, I’ve seen many great businesses built with a lot of hard work and deep passion. But in recent years Silicon Valley has sometimes felt as if it’s become a cult of fundraising and unicorn-chasing. I feel as if we need to get back to the cult of just building a great business. 

The startup world has also become a subculture that can be deep in impenetrable jargon and can seem exclusionary to those who aren’t  connected  with the startup intelligentsia. With this book I hope to help demystify the process of getting from a startup idea to a successful, thriving operation – with or without venture capital. You don’t need an MBA, ivy league connections, or a rich uncle. All you need is passion, intention, and a good dose of tenacity.

Steve Jobs once said that everything in the world was “made by people who were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build things that other people can use.” 

It is my hope that the framework I present in this book will be helpful whether you intend to build a billion-dollar unicorn, a solid member of the Mittelstand, or a social venture focused on saving the world through sustainable impact.

Over the years, through my work at Stanford and Miller Center, I’ve had the opportunity to work with hundreds of startup founders. I’ve seen some succeed wildly and some fail miserably. From watching those patterns, I’ve developed a framework I call the Launch Path. It’s a process designed to help entrepreneurs everywhere get efficiently and effectively from an early startup idea to a successfully launched venture. 

That’s the course you are in. So, here we go, down the Launch Path. Let’s build a startup together. Let’s dream in Technicolor but execute in black and white because that’s how great ventures are built.