Reading the latest A16Z article “It’s time to build” got me thinking about the challenges that ‘builders’ face. “The problem is desire. We need to *want* these things. The problem is inertia. We need to want these things more than we want to prevent these things. The problem is regulatory capture. We need to want new companies to build these things, even if incumbents don’t like it, even if only to force the incumbents to build these things. And the problem is will. We need to build these things […] Building isn’t easy, or we’d already be doing all this. We need to demand more of our political leaders, of our CEOs, our entrepreneurs, our investors. We need to demand more of our culture, of our society. And we need to demand more from one another. We’re all necessary, and we can all contribute, to building.“ It speaks to me on a personal and a professional level as an entrepreneur and I wish there was a more efficient ways for smaller companies and big guys working together. There are so many adversaries startups need to face:
On a macro-level, we have the above – the inertia of people governing our countries and not providing enough support and incentives for those, who are that moving force, that have that ‘desire’ to change status quo. On a micro-level, we have a simple human nature paradox. We may want to change things but our fear of loss overtakes. Every human decision can be broken down into perceived risk versus opportunity, loss versus gain. Everyone is scared of losing something, and that fear of loss tends to overshadow the potential benefits. (As they say “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”). If money is not the problem, what needs to be done to change that? What are your thoughts?
