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Are We Growing or Just Getting Fat?
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Does Startup Success Validate Us Personally?
How We Secretly Lose Control of Our Startups
Should Kids Follow in Our Founder Footsteps?
The Evolution of Entry Level Workers
Assume Everyone Will Leave in Year One
Stop Listening to Investors
Was Mortgaging My Life Worth it?
What's My Startup Worth in an Acquisition?
When Our Ambition is Our Enemy
Are Startups in a "Silent Recession"?
The 5 Types of Startup Funding
What Is Startup Funding?
Do Founders Deserve Their Profit?
Michelle Glauser on Diversity and Inclusion
The Utter STUPIDITY of "Risking it All"
Committees Are Where Progress Goes to Die
More Money (Really Means) More Problems
Why Most Founders Don't Get Rich
Investors will be Obsolete
Why is a Founder so Hard to Replace?
We Can't Grow by Saying "No"
Do People Really Want Me to Succeed?
Is the Problem the Player or the Coach?
Will Investors Bail Me Out?
The Value of Actually Getting Paid
Why do Founders Suck at Asking for Help?
Wait a Minute before Giving Away Equity
You Only Think You Work Hard
SMALL is the New Big — Embracing Efficiency in the Age of AI
The 9 Best Growth Agencies for Startups
This is BOOTSTRAPPED — 3 Strategies to Build Your Startup Without Funding
Never Share Your Net Worth
A Steady Hand in the Middle of the Storm
Risk it All vs Steady Paycheck
How About a Startup that Just Makes Money?
How to Recruit a Rockstar Advisor
Why Having Zero Experience is a Huge Asset
My Competitor Got Funded — Am I Screwed?
The Hidden Treasure of Failed Startups
If It Makes Money, It Makes Sense
Why do VCs Keep Giving Failed Founders Money?
$10K Per Month isn't Just Revenue — It's Life Support
The Ridiculous Spectrum of Investor Feedback
Startup CEOs Aren't Really CEOs
Series A, B, C, D, and E Funding: How It Works
Best Pitch Decks Ever: The Most Successful Fundraising Pitches You Need to Know
When to Raise Funds
Why Aren't Investors Responding to Me?
Should I Regret Not Raising Capital?
Unemployment Cases — Why I LOOOOOVE To Win Them So Much.
How Much to Pay Yourself
Heat-Seeking Missile: WePay’s Journey to Product-Market Fit — Interview with Rich Aberman, Co-Founder of Wepay
The R&D technique for startups: Rip off & Duplicate
Why Some Startups Win.
Chapter #1: First Steps To Validate Your Business Idea
Product Users, Not Ideas, Will Determine Your Startup’s Fate
Drop Your Free Tier
Your Advisors Are Probably Wrong
Growth Isn't Always Good
How to Shut Down Gracefully
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Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?
How to Pick the Wrong Co-Founder
Staying Small While Going Big
Investors are NOT on Our Side of the Table
Who am I Really Competing Against?
Why Can't Founders Replace Themselves?
Actually, We Have Plenty of Time
Quitting vs Letting Go
How Startups Actually Get Bought
What if I'm Building the Wrong Product?
Are Founders Driven by Fear or Greed?
Why I'm Either Working or Feeling Guilty
Startup Financial Assumptions
Why Every Kid Should be a Startup Founder
We Only Have to be Right Once
If a Startup Sinks, Founders Go Down With it
Founder Success: We Need a Strict Definition of Personal Success
Is Quiet Quitting a Problem at Startup Companies?
Founder Exits are Hard Work and Good Fortune, Not "Good Luck"
Finalizing Startup Projections
All Founders are Beloved In Good Times
Our Startup Culture of Entitlement
The Bullshit Case for Raising Capital
How do We Manage Our Founder Flaws?
What If my plan for retirement is "never retire"?
Startup Failure is just One Chapter in Founder Life
6 Similarities between Startup Founders and Pro Athletes
All Founders Make Bad Decisions — and That's OK
Startup Board Negotiations: How do I tell the board I need a new deal?
Founder Sacrifice — At What Point Have I Gone Too Far?
Youth Entrepreneurship: Can Middle Schoolers be Founders?
Living the Founder Legend Isn't so Fun
Why Do VC Funded Startups Love "Fake Growth?"
How Should I Share My Wealth with Family?
How Many Deaths Can a Startup Survive?
This is Probably Your Last Success
Why Do We Still Have Full-Time Employees?

Time is Our Greatest Asset

Wil Schroter

Time is Our Greatest Asset

The most powerful asset a startup can have is simply enough time to operate.

The problem is, most of us don't have that asset — at all. In fact, the very nature of a startup is often fighting the few moments we have left until our startup runs out of money altogether. Since we're all so hyper-aware of what happens when we run out of time, let's talk about the opposite — what happens when we have lots of time to build our startup?

Our internal motto at Startups has implicitly been "Let's stick around long enough to build our dream." That meant constantly fighting to stay profitable so that we could have an unlimited runway. As we celebrate our 11th birthday, I'd like to reflect on what the asset of "unlimited time" has done for us.

We Can Survive Some Bad Bets

We all operate on such a short timeline in the startup world that it's easy to overlook how just a few bad bets can quickly destroy us. Hiring the wrong executive, getting behind in our fundraise, or even waiting too long to get the product shipped. Every one of those bets has a real cost, but it always comes back to "time" as the only way to defend against a bad bet.

We've made tons of bad bets. We bet on products that never got traction, people that never delivered, and a million marketing plans that never grew our business. I'm not sore about making bad bets — we have to make lots of bets in order to figure out what works. I'm thankful that we had the foresight to always focus on profitability first, and then bad bets.

Compare that to most startups that have 12-18 months of runway. The time it would take to hire someone, find out they were horrible, and then try to backfill them with someone who isn't could take a year. How do you survive that kind of bad bet when you only have a few months to get it right? You can't. Survivability is the key to making bets.

We Can Outlive Our Competition

Every year since our inception, there's been some company that was going to come along and destroy some facet of our business. We used to get super freaked out by this as anyone else would. We'd say, "Oh no, fancy new company X just raised a ton of money to do exactly what we do with one of our products! We're doomed!" And then we'd spend months trying to figure out how to possibly defend ourselves.

But then something really weird happened — time passed. Unlike our new evil competitor, who was burning through cash as fast as they could raise it to topple us, we had the luxury of being sustainable while they were still fighting for air. While they went from spending all of their time chest-pounding on social media to getting super quiet trying to fill in a down round, we just kept chugging forward.

In over a decade, we've watched countless competitors come and go. In fact, so many that we're almost surprised when a company actually makes it past the 5+ year mark. What was our secret sauce? You guessed it — time. We had built a sustainable business that, while not always the hottest and shiniest, continued to be the most stable.

We Can Think Long Term

Knowing that we'll be around for a minute gives another unusual asset — the ability to think long-term. Throughout most of my startup career, I have always lived pretty much hand-to-mouth with my startup. I was constantly trying to "feed the beast" of payroll, OpEx, and marketing. In fact, I spent so much time just trying to survive that it was always difficult to think long-term. But the long-term thinking is where the gold is.

Long-term thinking gives us the ability to build things that won't possibly benefit us now but put us markedly ahead of our competition in the future. Startups aren't well known for long-term thinking. We tend to think in terms of "What makes sense this month, or this quarter?" Frankly, we're not well-rewarded for super long-term bets because we tend to have to prove ourselves with the short-term bets first.

All of this long-term thinking is supported by a single, basic fact — we have an unlimited runway. Not because we raised a massive round of capital or did anything fancy. We just kept expenses lower than revenue as our first priority. We've essentially invested in the asset of "time," and now we're learning how to use it as one of our greatest advantages in the startup game. Who would have guessed?

In Case You Missed It

How To Write A Business Plan: A Comprehensive Guide A step-by-step guide on writing a business plan to catch an investor's attention & serve as a guiding star for your business.

Being Leveraged Means Having Zero Choices (https://www.startups.com/community/startup-therapy/episode/158) Early on, Founders tend to believe that choosing an investor is an option. It's possible, but unless we're in the top 5 percent of those that have been on this route more than once, we don't get the luxury of choice here.

How I Harness My Insane Startup Anxiety There are two types of Founders: those that admit they are wracked with anxiety, and those that are lying about it. We’re all going to deal with it for the rest of our lives — so why not use it as a superpower, instead of reacting like it’s kryptonite?

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