A successful entrepreneur knows how to master his / her environment. An idea can only take you so far. The skill lies in knowing how and when to execute. Inspire Mastery is a series that looks at some of the trends that are driving the journey of South Africa’s savvy tech entrepreneurs.
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“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” This quote from former South African president Nelson Mandela could just as easily have come from Apple’s great Steve Jobs or Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Where Mandela was most likely talking within the context of overcoming Apartheid and other socio-political obstacles, it’s still very applicable to today’s entrepreneur: Try, try and try some more. Don’t let your vision go, and don’t be afraid to experiment.
The importance of having the right mindset when it comes to evaluating decision-making is crucial in an entrepreneur’s journey to success. One key thing we’ve noticed about many local tech entrepreneurs is that they not only believe in their vision and the future of the country, they’re able to convince others of their ideals as well.
Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck points to the growth mindset — a thought process that sees you constantly monitoring yourself. Whether each decision is a mistake or an achievement, each is an experience that makes your future decision-making more accurate.
Here are a couple of thoughts that can help drive South Africa’s tech entrepreneurs:
Failure as a learning process
Five out of seven small businesses started in South Africa will fold in the first year. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
It’s almost cliche these days to say that failure is merely a symptom of modern culture’s obsession with experimentation. But it is significant to innovation and still something that needs to be ingrained in the country’s future. The environment is still in the process of being developed to fully support such a train of thought.
In South Africa business failure is seen as a demoralising event in a person’s life because it affects both your professional and personal self-esteem. A report by Omidyar Network found that — in Africa — there’s a culture problem when it comes to supporting entrepreneurship. Society fails to encourage students to recognise their entrepreneurial potential, as it often values and respects professionals over entrepreneurs.
The appetite for risk needs to be encouraged.
The platform to fail fast, yet succeed faster is extremely critical to innovation. Technology empowers us to do so. It enables us to do things quicker and more efficiently: build a web application, gain skills, execute, validate, fail, and do it again — the next time, with more know-how.
Mistakes and failure come with the territory of being an entrepreneur. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not putting yourself out there enough.
In his book The Lean Startup, Eric Ries writes that “the grim reality is that most startups fail. Most new products are not successful. Yet the story of perseverance, creative genius, and hard work persists.”
A step in the right direction, earlier this year, South Africa saw its first Lean Startup Machine event, where tech entrepreneurs learned to collaborate, execute and — more importantly — experiment with different products over the course of a few days only. The idea is to learn the process of experimentation and validation.
There’s a great sense of urgency
Urgency is a key dynamic of the modern tech startup. In South Africa this couldn’t be more true.
According to Stats SA, almost 70% of people who start an informal business do so because they are unemployed and have no alternative source of income, and they are self-funded.
This shows that entrepreneurs are meeting real demands in the country’s complex environment. In other words, there is room for more business and job creation.
This characteristic is key to how businesses grow. Startups are defined by their energy and thirst to innovate. There’s a pressing sense of urgency to move fast and be agile. Urgency drives people to perform.
A recent article in the Telegraph points out that startup culture is about fierce activity, urgently undertaken with the keenest sense of its impact on the present. It galvanises young firms to achieve incredible feats through the power of belief.
As the late president’s quote above suggests, South African culture has an inspiring degree of perseverance, which is a key trait of being an entrepreneur. Innovation and entrepreneurship are about self-determination. As is the case with South Africa, a successful entrepreneur can create his or her own future. It all depends on how you look at it.
Image by myklroventine via Flickr.
