Are Internet Marketers Ambitious Enough?
By Anna Johnson on August 3rd, 2009A recent ReadWriteWeb post by Hamburg, Germany based venture capitalist, Paul Jozefak, reckons startup companies outside Silicon Valley owe it to themselves to measure themselves against Valley standards. I reckon the same principle applies to many self-described Internet marketers who hold themselves back by aiming for the ceiling instead of the sky.
Paul Jozefak says he is irked by European startups that pitch their companies to him without taking into account their U.S. competition. But it’s not just a failure to consider U.S. competitors that’s the problem – it’s also a failure to operate by Valley standards.
“The Valley may be sunny and inviting, but everyone is there to win. Those who aren’t tend to pack up quickly. Those who stay and continue to start up or finance new businesses have the loftiest of goals. They’re probably not all about the money. Sure, they enjoy the perks of an exit, but my experience is that a lot of people in the Valley are out to change the world, or at least try. You hear it in their pitch and you see it in their eyes,” Paul Jozefak writes.
Meanwhile, Paul says that most of the European startups he sees lack the same level of “hunger, drive, and lofty goals” of typical Silicon Valley companies. He stresses that it’s not about being ‘American’ either, since the “the Valley is made up of people from every corner of the earth. Each and every startup I have visited there was a pot pourri of backgrounds, often European.”
In the Internet marketing niche, I see many who desire ‘financial freedom’ but patently lack the kind of hunger, drive and lofty goals Paul is talking about. That’s not to say everyone needs to have lofty goals – and what is ‘lofty’ to one person may not be to another – but I do see many Internet marketers play it safe rather than aim for a home run when it comes to bringing out new products and services.
Many of us, it seems, have taken the idea of ‘modeling success’ to the point where we don’t have the guts to do anything substantially different, let alone groundbreaking.
Sure, I’m all for modeling success and, since most of us build our businesses without venture funding, I recognize that most of us don’t have the capital to take outlandish risks on untested products or services. But do we risk letting this kind of thinking cap our own potential?
There are some great minds in the Internet marketing scene and certainly some Internet marketers pushing the envelope in major ways. You know who you are. In many ways their aspirations and accomplishments are much more impressive than those of a Silicon Valley startup with millions of dollars of venture capital. The innovator who starts with nothing but a vision, and then, through their own blood, sweat and tears, ends up building a substantial enterprise, is, in my opinion, the quintessential entrepreneur.
But to everyone who knows they could be pushing themselves a bit more, who knows they have much more to give, who knows they are far from reaching their potential, who knows that ‘financial freedom’ is a byproduct of creating something greater, I say: go for it!
And, to all of us: let’s not just aim to do what has been done before; let’s strive to do more and BE more. Let’s have the kind of hunger, drive and lofty goals that Paul Jozefak laments is lacking in most of the startups he sees. Let’s not just model success, let’s model success… and then build a new model.
Source: Paul Jozefak, “Not in the Valley? At Least Compete With It,” ReadWriteWeb, July 26, 2009
