This post originally appeared in our Startup Growth Newsletter.
We were hungry. This was convenient, as it was lunchtime. And so Mike Veilleux, Janelle Gorman and myself embarked on what we thought was a simple journey to pick up our food order from a local restaurant.
How naive we were.
As we headed downtown this past Monday, the late summer sun shining in our faces, we were on top of the world. Until we arrived at the restaurant. It was closed. We re-looked at our online order to discover it would be ready at 8:30 the next morning.
We were discouraged, but we were also hungry. And so we persevered. Off to the next restaurant!
We walked a little more quickly, the jokes a little less bubbly, and arrived at our second choice. It was closed. Mondays following a pandemic we discovered were not ideal days to get lunch.
Our lunch window was waning, as we all had meetings to get back to. But we weren’t going to give up. We’re smart. We have technology. Mike went to DoorDash. There was a minimum that surpassed what we were going to order.
As we headed back to the office, our search party was beginning to fracture.
I brought a lousy ham sandwich, I said. I’ll just eat that.
I don’t really need lunch, Janelle said. I’m not even that hungry.
Never, Mike Veilleux, the hero of our story, proclaimed. We are getting food or we’re going to die trying.
In the end, we didn’t have to die. This wasn’t the Shackleton Expedition. Mike just ordered falafel, got in his car, and drove across town to pick it up.
But let me tell you, dear reader, it tasted that much better for all of the effort it took to obtain it.
This lesson is important because, as the below graph shows, during your startup journey you are going to hit the “trough of sorrow” phase. All of those restaurants are going to be closed. And the question will be: How hungry are you?
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