The most precocious, prescient, urgent advice for any startup founder
As Nike founder, Phil Knight, says himself, this might be the best advice, maybe the only advice, any of us should ever give… Full quote below…
I asked myself: what if there was a way, without being an athlete, to feel what athletes feel? To play all the time instead of working, or else to enjoy work so much that it becomes essentially the same thing?
Maybe the only answer, I thought, was to find some prodigious, improbable dream that seemed worthy, that seemed fun, that seemed a good fit, and chase it with an athlete’s single-minded dedication and purpose.
Like it or not, life is a game. Whoever denies that truth, whoever simply refuses to play, gets left on the sidelines, and I didn’t want that. More than anything, that was the thing I did not want.
Which led as always to my crazy idea. Maybe, just maybe, I need to take one more look.
[…]
What remains is this one sliver of certainty, this one shining truth that will never go away. At 24, somehow, I did decide that the world is made up of crazy ideas. History is one long procession of crazy ideas.
The things I loved most – sports, books, democracy, free enterprise – started as crazy ideas.
So that morning, in 1962, I told myself: let everyone else call your idea crazy. Just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there. And don’t give much thought to wherever “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.
That’s the precocious, prescient, urgent advice I managed to give myself out of the blue, and somehow managed to take. Half a century later, I believe it’s the best advice, maybe the only advice, any of us should ever give.
Love it.
