STOP THINKING LIKE A STARTUP.

• Author: Wright, Dalton

It can be tempting to focus on short-term goals, but you don't hit a homerun without focusing on the long-game.

The origin stories of many successful venture-backed startups are often characterized by the extreme efforts of brilliant founding teams who, upon identifying an important problem in the world, creatively and aggressively pursue an innovative solution for an unmet need.

Popular mantras to "fail fast" and "break things" encourage the spirit of exploration, rapid iteration, and a bias toward action as founders work to find product/market fit, outmaneuver the competition, and achieve breakout velocity and scale.

I love speed as much as the next VC, but lost in that imagery is how great founders often temper their urgency with that age-old virtue, patience, to make critical decisions with the long view in mind.

// KNOW WHEN IT'S A SPRINT

The principle of patience is something I've thought about over the years as I've participated in many risky investments at the earliest stages of entrepreneurs' long journeys. I've seen startups grow rapidly, only to flame out later as customer churn caught up to them. I have also seen teams stumble miserably out of the gate, cut expenses to conserve cash, and then relaunch a year later with a high-growth, winning product.

I've seen founders and their trusting teams endure extreme highs and lows. Often they respond with increased urgency, all while patiently understanding that meaningful, enduring companies take significant time, sacrifice, and even a little luck to build.

Most entrepreneurs move with a sense of optimistic urgency, but great entrepreneurs push a relentless pace inside their companies while also being realistic about product capabilities and limitations; sales cycles and implementation times; as well as external, difficult-to-assess factors like market timing, buyer behavior, and competitors' movements.

The better the entrepreneur, the better his or her ability to know when and where to sprint and when to maintain a steady cadence (or even slow down) as events unfold and pieces are put into place. This ability has important implications for fundraising plans (amounts, uses, timing) and is directly tied to the company's capital efficiency, enterprise value, and market position.

The best founders launch companies in spaces they intend to revolutionize and dominate for decades with a "North Star" purpose for existence that guides the team's priorities, decisions, and execution in the...