Over the course of the past few weeks, I've been serving as a mentor to first-time entrepreneurs. It's been an amazing experience that's teaching me more than I've returned. Mostly, it's helped solidify some of my hypotheses about startups, entrepreneurs and business development but it's also helped humble my thinking. Finally, first-time entrepreneurs are like babies: they soak up information like a sponge, they try to imitate those they look upto closely, they have no concept of right & wrong, they're still developing themselves physically & mentally, and they live without any preconceptions (hence why unsocialized startups fail).

Though it's unsurprising how most people (especially, new entrepreneurs) want to hear only good things about themselves and their startups. However, some mentors allow this mentality to overcome their work and begin to give "feel good" advice rather than deliver painful news. Yet, most people need to acknowledge that the point of a mentor is to tell you what you want to hear the least. They need to expose the truth and the realities of life to the entrepreneurs but be there when they need a shoulder. A mentor's main job is to ensure their entrepreneurs respond to the environment appropriately both emotionally and strategically.

They must push their entrepreneurs past their perceived limits to reach higher faster to become stronger. Their job is less about lecturing but to create a network that their students can rely on. Rather than act as a college professor, act as an extremely knowledge-specific friend. Close friends tell you what others are too afraid to say, but they say it with the intent to help: 

"I push my students to the edge and right before they jump off, I pull them back"

- Dr. Cakir, South Brunswick High School (he taught the most advanced mathematics & physics courses at my high school)

However, they need to let their startups fail but help them understand why they did and how bounce back. I oppose hiding information to let your startups fail, but I'm advocating for disallowing yourself from taking your startup's responsibilities. This final point is tricky, but an apt analogy: think "slow parenting" rather than "helicopter parenting". In the latter case, you try to abstract any harm that can approach your children, which allows your children to grow up quickly; on the other hand, "slow parenting" advocates for your children to grow up at their own pace. You let your children face the world themselves and helping them as they hit road-bumps. "Slow parenting" focuses on creating a bond with your children that's deep and emotionally connected, whereas, "helicopter parents" focuses on material success. In either case, the parents want their children to live fullfilling lives, but the focus is completely different and in the latter case when children finally face adversity they fail miserably because they never had to deal with previous adversity.

A year or two back, I was obsessed with determining the factors for success. I tried to work out all kinds of formulas but in the end I ended up with the following. I view this as an advancement for "metaphorical mathematics":

Success =
([Passion + Focus] * Intelligence) ^Luck

Passion - physical effort that is exerted / time

Passion is how much consistent physical effort you put into changing reality i.e. some world view (however narrow you define world). Physical effort is the only noticeable effort in the world and it is controlled by your thoughts.  

Focus - mental progress on a given problem / time

There's an implicit understanding that your efforts must be focused in a particular direction e.g. for a startup, developing some technology. Effort without focus is a scatter plot but focused effort leads to a line that should trend upwards. Additionally, when you lack focus it's harder to determine how well you're performing. Finally, I've defined it in terms of a percentage of the total effort you spend during the day doing/thinking about something because as I've stated before focus is less about more effort rather than reducing existing distractions.

Focus can also be negative meaning that you're solving so many different types of problems you make backward or stagnant progress on the important problems. When your mental efforts stagnate then you're essentially moving in a negative direction of solving the problem. 

Focus is about reducing distractions so you increase your efforts (physically & mentally) toward achieving your goals faster. 

Intelligence - Amount of knowledge that can be directly applied to the venture.

This can be negative if your knowledge detriments your cause e.g. knowing about the difficulties in a particular industry can cause "analysis paralysis". However, more often having more knowledge is better. Experience is the best process of gaining valuable intelligence. As intelligence is how quickly you can learn and adapt to unusual circumstances.

Luck - Uncontrollable events that impact your decisions

As it's known, luck usually alludes to favorable experiences that propel your efforts. However, there's the flipside when luck "works" against you. I've made luck an exponential factor as when luck works against you (i.e. negatively) then your success has been fractionally achieved (otherwise your complaints would be compliments for your luck!). Yet, on the other hand, if your success is positive (default: 1) then it either does nothing or exponentially improves your odds.

So how can you influence your luck? Well what you would like are 'opportunities that favor you'. Opportunity, as defined by Louis Pasteur, is "chance that favors a prepared mind". So, in the case there's one of two things todo as you enhance your luck:

1. Learn more about the world around you so you're better prepared. most people never realize their opportunities, entrepreneurs do and that's the main difference!
2. Do more stuff so you have more 'chances'. When you put more time, effort, or money into a certain problem, you'll inevitably find a compromising solution that benefits you. Think about it as a random number generator, that mostly provides noise/garbage but the more times you run it the better the signal. Bad luck is simply and ill-timed event so to overcome it either wait out the event's effect or adapt to the new world. In both cases, you're spending more time, energy, and/or money to discover a 'compromising solution'.

There's been a great deal of discussion of how to encourage startups, entrepreneurs, and Americans, in general, to take more risk. Venture capitalists, bloggers, and other venture role-models complain that entrepreneurs have lost their ambitious drive [1]. Additionally, educators see their American students are hopelessly losing out to their international counter-parts [2]. Some people of the current generation have written pieces about the inherent entitlement: "so in that sense, we’re a bit greedy, a bit selfish, a bit entitled, and a bit impatient" [3]. 

There's been an immense amount of effort in figuring out where the difficulty lies:

• Younger people have few examples of great entrepreneurship. [4]
• Statistically, you'll be more successful when you're 40...maybe? [5]
• Some people are just risk-adverse! [6]
• America is made of wimps! [7].

It turns out "all learning is based on trying something new, making a mistake, adjusting your actions, trying again, repeating until you get the results you desire" [8].  From my experience, I view risk as an external perception surrounding my activities. For me, most of what I do is a logical extension based on experience. Yet, for the uninitiated it seems like I'm stupid and/or fearless in my actions. Finally, I've learned "confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong.” [9]

If you feel that you would like to be able to stomach greater risk then start experimenting more. Start off with small projects that you know how to accomplish. Then start to iterate on the more projects by extending yourself into uncharted terrains e.g. if you're a developer see if you can learn market & sell your project. As you start to gain more insights from your projects start to iterate into areas that scare you. Eventually, you'll start to realize concepts that others have no idea about and that thinking will lead you to find opportunities others would never pursue. Risk is less about courage but more about careful exploitation by mitigating personal fears. 

Sources:

1. http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/17/memo-to-start-ups-you%E2%80%99re-supposed-to...
2. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/12/21/...
3. http://sarahmerion.com/digitalanthropology/gen-y-talks-the-talk-but-they-dont...
4. http://bostonvcblog.typepad.com/vc/2010/01/a-lost-generation-of-entrepreneurs...
5. http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedFiles/FactSheet/entrep_and_economy_fast_facts...
6. http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/29/india-angel-investors/
7. http://steve-olson.com/when-did-america-become-a-nation-of-frightened-wimps/
8. http://steve-olson.com/10-things-i-learned-from-my-4-year-old/
9. http://steve-olson.com/7-things-my-7-year-old-learned-from-mma-mixed-martial-...

More reading:

1. http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/20/the-difference-between-1-billion-plus-in-exi...
2. http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/15/how-to-profit-off-the-poor%E2%80%A6-and-keep...

It's interesting that over the past few years, there's a trend to accept and embrace failure. It seems that failure is now the new badge to add to my chic status. However, based on my experience when you actually face failure, its humbling and oddly comforting. Its an inevitable battle on the path to victory but the battle scars never fully heal. Only your heart knows what it takes to kill failure, but it’s up to your mind to exploit its weaknesses.

Failure is waking up one day and realizing that some time ago, you began a journey. You, too, were excited and unashamed about the prospects of learning and experiencing the world! Every stride you took carried a whimsical tune and naive optimism that only new entrepreneurs understand. People around you began to question your judgment and actions (some sneered insanity). Yet, you knew that these people wouldcome running back to you with their hat in hand to relish in your success. Overtime reality starts to temper your enthusiasm but you saw an opportunity to provide for humanity...scalably.

Today, however, is wildly different. Your enthusiasm evaporated. Your spirits are tarnished. All hope has vanished as have your family, friends, and employees. You begin to question your ambitions and mostly your intelligence/sanity. You get out of bed only to fall back on your sweat-drenched pillow. You've been hit square in your chest and its knocked all the entrepreneurial wind out of you. Your dreams have been murdered! Instead of waking up to a cheerful glee, you peer into bitterness. You've worked day and night over a long period of time only to realize nothing. All the work you poured into your execution is wasted. There's nothing to show progress.

Failure is when everything you cherished slips away. Failure hurts, stings, burns, and irritates. It lingers in the corners waiting for an ominous moment to pounce as success gets tired of nourishing you. Failure is realizing the world has other ambitions and cares less about your happiness. If you believe that failure is fun and just embracing it answers life, then you are mistaken. Failure is when you lose it. It's when standing by yourself feels lonely. Failure throws sand in your eyes. It pushes you when you're weak and pulls you when you're struggling. It loves when you wither and hates your smiles. Never confuse failure with evil, failure has its own ambitions. Evil has motivations to advance its position in the world. Failure is a black hole, it never stops sucking. Overcoming failure is more emotional than logical and the more you reason the worse it gets. It’s when your belief system starts to crack. Failure must be embraced but never think it's a rollercoaster that endorses fun. It's a rollercoaster that takes you to the depths of the world you never wanted to see. It spirals out of control into an abyss. When you get past it, that's where the fun begins...