Speed Kills…and ‘Too Fast To Succeed?

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  • on February 26th, 2013

Speed kills for sure, but can you go ‘Too Fast to Succeed’?

I loved this post from Josh Williams now at $FB titled ‘play by your own rules‘.

But of all the lessons I’ve learned through this journey, this one sticks out like a splinter.

Play by your own rules.

Listen to your users more than the press. Don’t get sucked into the gravity hole between you and your competition. Ruthlessly run your own path, not someone else’s.

Speed may not kill start-ups, but it is a bitch.

In my world of investing, if you chase startups or stocks, you will pay up and you will bring undo stress. We live in a world of real-time information which has made people chase and panic in much quicker cycles. We share the ideas and drama as it unfolds all day ourselves on Stocktwits.

I am addicted to the real-time web and in 2008, you could have bought most of the ‘real-time’ web for $300 million.

Today, it’s priceless and worthless.

Seth Godin posted today wrote that ‘real-time news is neither‘. The gist:

In the last ten years we’ve redefined breaking news from “happened yesterday” to “happened less than fifteen seconds ago.” The next order of magnitude will be prohibitively expensive and (most of the time) not particularly useful. Better, I think, to hustle in the other direction and figure out how to benefit from well-understood truth instead of fast and fresh rumor.

That is some truthiness.

It makes sense that entreprenuers and investors want to go faster. There is a ton of what I call ‘social leverage’ in the world and the buzzword of today is acceleration.

It’s probably a good time though to really think about what succeed, speed and real-time really mean.

The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.

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