PAUL: It’s Paul.

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FLORIN: It’s Florin. What are we grinding today?

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PAUL: Florin,

 remember in the discussion that we had after we recorded the episode with the hip menu acquisition by FoodPanda, you were saying that you should never give up and keep doing your best in this startup world. Could you give more details about this? Because I think it would be valuable for our listeners to understand this.

FLORIN: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. Actually, I had this conversation with a very dear friend of mine, and she was like, I’m not sure because sometimes it feels like you should just give up. But instead, sometimes it’s like the people who don’t give up, they win. Why is that? I was like, you know the problem with giving up is it’s like you’re on a path to achieving something, something that’s absolutely impressive or unnatural or disruptive, and you know that you can get there. But then there’s going to be a lot of problems, a lot of drawbacks, a lot of things that will make you fall down. How to stay motivated in startups is key because startup life is like a roller coaster. You go up and then you go down. When you go down, you feel like giving up. And sometimes, if you really want to achieve the end goal, you will never give up. You should never give up because you need to understand that something bad happened to you and that’s why you want to give up. You don’t want to give up because of other reasons. You just want to give up because you feel that you’ve lost so much speed, so much velocity that you will never get to reach the top players in that industry or in that race or in whatever you are trying to compete in because you feel that now they have an advantage because you’ve just had a disadvantage and that makes you want to give up.

PAUL: The idea would be that even if you close the startup or don’t do anything about it, you don’t have the what if. So to be sure that you tried what you wanted to. So there are no regrets, no what if I would have tried that, if I would have done that. You know, like, to not miss things that you felt that you could do, but you didn’t do it because I don’t or some reasons.

FLORIN: That should be a good end when you’re 100 % convinced that you cannot do this, and this is not related to moments where it was hard.

PAUL: I won’t enter that market because I’m sure that there is already the other competitor who has the entire market, so most probably I won’t be able to get them.

How to Stay Motivated in Startups When Facing Competitors

FLORIN: That’s also not true. You need to understand that if you go into a race and you go full speed, so you try to be the fastest racer in that race, or you try to be the best fighter. Think of Luffy and Son Goku from Anyways and other stuff like that who are always super obsessed about giving their all, training harder, doing better things, really struggling to reach those objectives. It’s like you got to be like that. And why is that? Because you should think about the fact that you were unlucky. You’ve had a drawback. Something held you back from achieving something. But if you don’t give up and you continue doing your best, you go full limit, full throttle. You go like a maniac, like an obsessed person, and you keep going and keep pushing towards those goals. The funny part is your competitors are also people. They are also companies. They will have problems. So by the moment that they have a problem and they start falling back, you will go up in full speed and then they will go behind you and you will be in the front and now you’ve overtaken them and you have the first position.

I’ve seen this over and over again in business. I’ve seen it in my business. I’ve seen it in other businesses. Even the food Panda, because that was the idea. The FoodPanda in the Hip Menu example. As I’ve said, there was no chance to compete with those guys, but you can go full throttle and then FoodPanda will close Hip Menu and all of a sudden you’re the second biggest player in the market and now you have a total chance of overtaking FoodPanda and conquering all of the market. How to stay motivated in startups is about pushing through those tough moments, knowing your opportunity will come.

PAUL: Yeah, because if we have to discuss a year ago, there is no way for some other app to conquer the food delivery market. And actually, one year later, it happened this and now.

FLORIN: This.

PAUL: Apps that I think didn’t exist at that point. It didn’t even exist.

FLORIN: I know for certain that nobody that I know has ever heard.

PAUL: Of them. And that’s actually now our favorite app. So I think…

FLORIN: And it’s something that used, I guess, like with young people inclusion, everybody just uses that now. And the food pandemic is slowly becoming irrelevant because of what they’ve done. So the guys from YouTube, they went full throttle. They went like maniacs. They were building something that they never should have built, but they wanted to build it because it was their passion. And now they’ve had a great opportunity because their competitor had a drawback. That’s why it’s so important to focus on how to stay motivated in startups even when it feels like you’re losing.

PAUL: And with a little bit of a pinch of salt to say like that, well, if it is obvious that it’s not a problem, no problem that you’re solving or something like that, you should stop because that’s the obvious thing to do. But in a situation in which you felt that you don’t have any chance, but you know that that’s a real problem and you have a passion to solve that.

FLORIN: This is interesting to point out in the episode. So basically what you’re saying, quit if it’s for the right reasons. You can’t get any traction, what you’re building is wrong, you’re not solving a real problem.

PAUL: You don’t have passion anymore for that. You have other things that you feel are more important to dedicate your time.

FLORIN: Yeah, that’s a good reason to quit. But the fact that you have a competitor and the competitor seems to be doing better than you are, that’s a bad reason to quit because they will fail. They will have points of failure as well. And if you really have everything else, you can get traction, you can get people to sign up for your app, you have passion for what you’re building. You see that you can validate stuff, you see that you can help real people with real problems. Even though the competitor exists now, it doesn’t mean that they will exist a couple of years from now on.

PAUL: Or that they won’t make a stupid move and annoy everyone in the market.

FLORIN: Exactly. That happens a lot. I can even give you an example with Formula One. There was this kid in the last season, 2019, he was at the Toro Rosso team in Formula One. Now he managed to get Red Bull because of some impressive stuff that he’s done. He started with Toro Rosso, which is still a team of Red Bull, for those of you who don’t know. Those are the lame cars that they have where they don’t have that much equipment, they don’t have the best things there. And this kid, he gave his all in a race that didn’t make sense because in that race, no matter who won, the championship was already decided. All of the places were decided. You couldn’t get more points than that. But he gave it his all and he ended up in the top three of the race because two Ferraris crashed into one another. Another Mercedes got pulled out of the race because of other reasons. And a lot of things happened to his competitors that made him become the superstar of that race and that will earn him a spot on the big team of Red Bull. This is a perfect example of how to stay motivated in startups—you push hard, no matter the circumstances, because opportunities can arise when you least expect them.

PAUL: So the answer would be always do your best, no matter the environment, let’s say like that. Do your best and sometimes you’ll be the right person at the right moment. Because I think the right people at the right moment are those who are doing their best, no matter the circumstances.

FLORIN: But if you’re doing nothing with your life, you will never be able to become the right person at the right time because you’re nowhere to be found. And then destiny cannot choose you.

PAUL: Give us an example, if you have, of reasons that you feel that would be…

FLORIN: That would be good for the theme of discussion today. And even if you have your own examples of moments when you’ve done this, you went full throttle and that led you to a win because the others started having drawbacks, give us those examples. If we really like them and if we really like them and we really think that they’re exactly what we’ve been discussing in this episode, we are going to mention all of those examples in a future episode on Startup Espresso.

PAUL: Yeah. So drop a message on the Facebook group and let’s continue the discussion there.

FLORIN: Yeah. And if you don’t know where the Facebook group is, just do a Google search for Startup Espresso and you will either land yourself on the group or if not on the website, then you will see the group on the website.

PAUL: Talk to you there.

FLORIN: Yeah. Definitely send us those.