Startups are a series of back-to-back marathons. To make it even more challenging, each marathon is made up of 422, 100-meter sprints.
To survive as a founder you need to understand and apply the concept of fast twitch and slow twitch muscles to how you work. Fast-twitch muscles are for endurance, slow-twitch muscles are for short sprints. One is slow to fatigue, the other tires quickly. One is a marathon, the other is a sprint.
Remember those cross-country races in grade school? There was always one kid that shot out of the blocks in a full sprint. I’ll never forget one year this kid, Billy, flew out off the starting line like a bullet. He left the field behind him in the dust and after 100 meters he was 200 feet in front.
Billy ended up crawling across the finish line, in dead last.
Early-stage founders tend to leave the gates fast and furious like Billy, only to end up burnt and exhausted as the rest of the competition — or worse, the opportunity — passes them by. Steady progress and timely, opportunistic sprints builds the momentum and keeps everything and everyone moving forward.
Don’t be a Billy.