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Startup Secret 45: Might as well go big

Why kill yourself for small potatoes? Once the oven is lit, stuff it full.

Rafe Needleman Former Editor at Large
Rafe Needleman reviews mobile apps and products for fun, and picks startups apart when he gets bored. He has evaluated thousands of new companies, most of which have since gone out of business.
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Rafe Needleman
2 min read


"It takes the same amount of time to run a small company as a big one."

--Shervin Pishevar, Managing Director, Menlo Ventures

This was just a little tip that Shervin let slip during a judging panel he was on at the Launch conference (stories). Later, Sky Dayton echoed the sentiment, talking about one of his early ventures running coffee shops in Santa Monica.

Sky watched Starbucks take off while he was running mom-and-pop cafes. He recognized that Starbucks chief Howard Schultz was probably not working much harder than he was, yet Starbucks was opening stores every day. Sky was not. Sky determined to make his next business "the Starbucks of" whatever it was he did. That next business: the ISP EarthLink.

You have to be careful, though. When an investor says this--and both Shervin and Sky were talking in the investor role at Launch--there's another agenda. They want their investments to generate big returns. So they're naturally going to encourage entrepreneurs to go big.

The last 3 secrets

And while it may take just as much work to run a big business as a small one, it also takes more money. And money means there are more people looking over your shoulder. A small businesses can often be run without outside money or interference, which, depending on your personality, may make life more enjoyable. Or not. It depends what you want your life to be.

But, certainly, if you're working on a business and are thinking at all about taking outside money to get it off the ground, you are pretty much obliged to think big. Bigger. Bigger still. If the angel investors and venture capitalists you are talking to wanted their money to make a steady, safe return, they'd put it in a CD, not you.

Startup Secrets is based on personal interviews with people building companies, and from their blog posts and news stories. Subscribe to Startup Secrets on Twitter or come back to Rafe's Radar every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a new one. See all the Startup Secrets.

Correction at 10 a.m. PT: The reference to the Starbucks executive has been fixed.