Every Moment in Business Happens Once

I’m not sure when entrepreneurship education really took off, but it’s popular. Whether it’s traditional business schools, New York Times bestselling books, social media influencers, podcasts—there is a lot to absorb, too much I think.

Academia is education. Sure it’s more than that, but distill it down and it’s sharing knowledge, skills and values to foster personal growth.

I’ve been thinking about entrepreneurship education a lot recently—asking myself questions like, “How do we cultivate better entrepreneurs from the start?”, or “Could this have been more successful if they knew better?”

Zero to One

A few years ago I read Zero to One (Thiel and Masters 2014). I highly recommend it and I’m ashamed it took me so long to get to it. It is definitively in the pantheon of great books on entrepreneurship.

A few years ago I found myself down a YouTube rabbit hole when I stumbled on this talk Thiel gave at Stanford Law School during his book tour.

The Dichotomy

Thiel starts by describing two approaches to entrepreneurship education. They fall into two categories: stories and frameworks.

This clicked immediately. Now, I see it everywhere.

At a venture conference, a recently exited startup founder stands at the dais and shares how they narrowly avoided ruin and then sold their company for $120M.

Or you scroll to a LinkedIn post about this new AI tool promising to deliver a bespoke Go-To-Market plan in minutes.

Stories

Stories and entrepreneurship go hand in hand, every founder has them. They are engaging and, in many ways, high-value social currency. Everyone loves a good war story.

Seasoned entrepreneurs love to share their stories, usually with a teachable moment or two sprinkled in. Do this, or don’t make this mistake I did. Nod if any of these sound familiar, “be careful which investors you take money from”, “focus on revenue”, “don’t be afraid to pivot” or “timing is everything”.

Stories make ideas stick. It sounds cliché but it’s true—backed by researchers and communicators alike. Professor Brené Brown in a TEDxHouston talk says, “I collect stories; that’s what I do. Maybe stories are just data with a soul.” (Gallo 2014) And in Acts of Meaning, psychologist Jerome Bruner convincingly argues narrative is essential to deeper understanding and learning (Bruner et al. 1993).

But what can a would-be founder glean from war stories or case studies?

Frameworks

Like stories, frameworks (or as Thiel puts it, formulas) are everywhere too. They are useful, especially for the uninitiated. They help you construct mental models, ingrain vocabulary, teach the “right” order of operations, and ultimately prioritize what is important.

I use frameworks quite a bit, especially with my team or a newly curious innovator. They are all a bit different and naturally follow a life cycle of birth and death, as new books are published or trends fade.

Out of curiosity, I researched how many frameworks have been popularized in the last few decades. It turns out that around 60 have been created. I was a bit shocked by how many there are. Some notable ones are:

Business Model Canvas, Lean Startup, I-Corps™, Jobs-To-Be-Done, Stage-Gate Processes, Three Horizons Framework, Porter’s Five Forces, Technology Readiness Levels and more—all are designed to solve a problem in business.

It makes me curious to look at when these frameworks are created and how their popularity changes over time. Another blog post for another day.

Uniqueness

I do think there is value in frameworks and stories. But as I think through all the startup stories I’ve gathered over the years, I believe Thiel is right when he says:

Every moment in the history of business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page won’t build a search engine. The next Mark Zuckerberg will not be building a social network.

This opening line from Thiel stopped me cold.

Learning by example and utilizing frameworks have always felt incomplete. They’re not bad, just insufficient.

They let new founders down. They promise to prepare you but they fall short, by a lot.

After all, any given startup is defined by countless variables like industry sector, technology landscape, market dynamics, regulatory environment, geography, era founded and most variable of all, its people.

So what you get is either high-level, generic advice that has unclear relevance, or highly specific anecdotes that may never happen—and if they do, your circumstance will prompt doubt and indecision.

So what’s the answer to how to educate founders and inventors?

Stories and frameworks cultivate confidence. Hopefully enough confidence to take the leap.

Meaningful learning happens by doing. Full stop. Training for a marathon will never fully prepare you for a marathon. (Ask me how I know.)

Final Thoughts

Frameworks and stories still have a place, but they need an asterisk. Nothing replaces experience. One never has complete information. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously said (Sonnenfeldt and Nessen 2004):

You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

His political legacy aside, I regard Rumsfeld to be one of the most brilliant thinkers and logicians in recent history. He’s right. At a certain point you just have to act. And accept uncertainty—and the risk that it might fail.

Entrepreneurial education—perhaps uniquely—will always fall short when you’re doing something no one has done before. Even grizzled serial entrepreneurs turned VCs or angel investors aren’t batting a thousand, because every moment in business happens only once.

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