Be Relentlessly Resourceful

Great piece. I am going to suggest a simplification of relentlessly resourceful to simply "relentless."

Startups all share that they some sort of end vision of meeting some unmet market need - e,g, the destination.

But to get to the destination you have to navigate through an infinately complex obstacle course. The obstacles takes the names of: resource constraints, technology limitations, getting distribution, competitors, alternatives, usability, [add 1,000 more items here].

Any one of these obstacles can stop a start-up dead on it's wheels. DOA. Thanks for playing.

So you're right - an entrepreneur does need to be relentlessly resourceful to solve many of these obstacles, and you only get a prize completing the obstacle course and reaching the destination. Second prize gets the set of Ginsu knives.

However, these aren't really all resource problems. Many of them are business design problems, strategy problems or partnership problems (and more).

Don't get me wrong - I love being resourceful, I love being scrappy and am a huge subscriber to the simply economics of a penny saved is a penny earned (note: you also can't save your way to greatness).

I think of the journey like water flowing down a river. It goes around obstacles, it dissolves obstacles, It changes course. When it gets dammed, it find tiny cracks naked to the eye, wedges in, and gets through. It never sleeps, it never debates, it never gives up. It simply seeks the path to the destination.

In a word: relentless.

Cheers,

Mark Rose Co-Founder Spare Change

When I lived in Kenya for two months, this is one of the things I found fascinating. People would face immense daily challenges (compared to what is faced in the "West") and yet they would still go about their business without a hint of anger or complaint.

It's sad though because you just have to wonder what bigger things could be accomplished if infrastructure was more stable so people could put their focus towards bigger issues rather than smaller ones.

Really appreciate the comment regarding foot note [3] -

"Now that we know what we're looking for, that leads to other questions. For example, can this quality be taught? After four years of trying to teach it to people, I'd say that yes, surprisingly often it can. Not to everyone, but to many people. [3] Some people are just constitutionally passive, but others have a latent ability to be relentlessly resourceful that only needs to be brought out."

Thank god. I dont know about your environment, but I am sick of coming across people who cite genius and "natural abilities" as factors of people's success... hate it when people cant acknowledge hardwork!

I like those choice of words! I am in the process of a start up and I have no programming experience and not techincal but starting a company that requires one to be. So being Relentlessy Resourceful is a key factor in my sucess of finding the key components to achieve success.

the way I think of it is that you want people who are bullets. They are sitting on a powder charge and all they need is a sharp tap to explode in a rush of F=ma. This also falls in line with the fact that the initial idea isn't that important. Often the initial idea is useful only because it leads you to discover a tough problem. The tough problem is the sharp tap. Some people fall down bleeding, other people explode.

Of course sometimes all that energy gets misdirected (wall street sucking up intelligent college grads anyone?) and we quite literally shoot ourselves in the foot. Creative, productive people have a lot of energy inside them. How that energy is directed can be perverted.