Passion Is Overrated

What?  Can I really write this post?  I’m all about business and startups and suggest that the driving force of a multitude of entrepreneurs isn’t as important as every other blog on this subject suggests?  What of all the stories?  What of all the movies?  What about all the inspirational books and the men and women just about to give up but hanging on because they accessed deep within themselves that last vestige of hope and passion that kept them motivated against all odds.

It makes for good storytelling, but I have to tell you that I’ve been in more than one startup.  I’ve advised in more than one startup, and I’ve seen countless pitches from founders.  I’ve spent my career focusing on startups.  I’ve yet to find a single founder of a startup who wasn’t consumed by passion.  Why in the world would anyone put in the kind of effort and sacrifice necessary to start a new venture if there wasn’t passion?  Everyone has it.  Everyone in this arena, anyway.

The bottom line is this.  According to studies (and there seem to be a million of them) the failure rate for startups is staggering.  Low estimates put it at about eighty percent, some suggest the rate is ninety-two percent.  That means your brilliant new business has about an eight percent chance of success, no matter how passionate you are.  In fact, there’s a good chance your passion, if not reined in, will be your undoing.

The Genome Project’s study of 3200 startups concluded that the number one reason for failure is self-destruction, primarily through premature scaling.  In other words, passion makes us grow too quickly and get ahead of ourselves.  Things get crazy and our dreams become nightmares.  Our incredible idea is so incredible that we implement it faster than it can actually succeed, and the net result is failure.

I’m not suggesting passion isn’t important.  I’m just trying to tell you that everyone attempting to start a business probably already has it.  Don’t work on motivating yourself in this area.  Don’t focus on the passion, focus on the business.  Make good, fundamental business decisions.  Those are the decisions that may seem dispassionate or even appear to show a lack of confidence in the idea about which you’re so passionate.  Don’t worry about that.  You worry about whether or not you’ll be one the eight percent that make it.