If you happen to be one of the lucky few who are part of this club, congratulations. But if you aren’t, you run the risk of chasing that unrealistic dream instead of focusing on building a business, which should be the reason why you struck out on our own in the first place. This idea of finding the next Facebook or AirBNB or Pinterest has spread like a virus across Silicon Valley that sets unrealistic expectations among entrepreneurs and warps the process of building a real business.
Diana Kander, entrepreneur-in-residence at the Kauffman Foundation agrees that the culture of the billion-dollar startup is damaging to entrepreneurship. It shifts the focus of potential entrepreneurs away from customers and towards investors. Over the long-term, as Kander indicates, entrepreneurial success depends on building a customer base by developing products and services that meet a need at a competitive price. It doesn’t matter how much venture capital you raise; if nobody wants to buy what you are selling your business will fail.
[Forbes]
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