STFU #09 — When Francis Drake met Giannis Antetokounmpo — False Binaries in Startup Success

Sir Francis Drake was one of the first explorers of the world in the 1570s — traveling around the globe. In fact, he was one of the key confidantes of Queen Elizabeth I who knighted him for his valor and wins. He won a lot of treasure and accolades but not a lot of hearts, as he illegally traded slaves, attacked Portuguese and Spanish ships, and looted ports to take the treasure to his English Kingdom.

Drake’s exploits made him a hero to the English, but his privateering led the Spanish to brand him a pirate, known to them as El Draque (“The Dragon” in old Spanish) — someone the Spanish mothers used freely while reprimanding their kids!

Few know about the number of times he failed, but still fought back. He failed when he tried to make the most of the slave trade but could not capture slaves. Then next time when he tried to sell slaves, the weather and the aggression of Spain made his men retreat. He literally saved himself from the toughest of situations, including his very humble beginnings when he escaped attacks by Catholics. He was deceived by many, and abandoned by few others, but in a way, he did the same to many others.

But as he went up and down in his expeditions, he lived by a motto for himself, “Sic Parvis Magna” — a Latin phrase that can be freely translated as “Greatness from Small Beginnings”

He emphasized smaller beginnings — start small, keep falling down, but stay persistent — keep at it until finished, and you will achieve greatness. Achieving the goal is not as important as the journey toward achieving it. Even today, this motto is used in video games or adventurous shows!

Maybe Giannis Antetokounmpo took a feather from his Cap!

A few days back, in a recent NBA season, the underdog team Miami Heat pulled off an upset by winning against the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks. In case you are alien to basketball like me, these 2 teams were fighting each other in the NBA playoffs. But the reason this match is famous is not because of what happened during the game, but AFTER it. When Giannis Antetokounmpo, one of the rising stars, refuted aggressively to a reporter on his question “ do you see this season as a failure”? (in case you are a social addict, you might have seen the video already).

“Do you get a promotion every year, in your job?” “No, right? So every year you work is a failure? Yes or no. No? Every year you work, you work towards something, towards a goal, which is to get a promotion, to be able to take care of your family, provide a house for them, or take care of your parents. You work towards a goal — it’s not a failure. It’s steps to success.”

“There’s always steps to it,” Antetokounmpo continued. “Michael Jordan played 15 years, won six championships. The other nine years [were] a failure? That’s what you’re telling me…why do you ask me that question? It’s the wrong question.”

“There’s no failure in sports. There’s good days, bad days. Some days you are able to be successful, some days you’re not. Some days it’s your turn, some days it’s not your turn. And that’s what sports is about. You don’t always win. Some other people are going to win. And this year, somebody else is going to win. We’re going to come back next year and try to be better.”

You can watch the 2-min video here. But it seems like the biggest takeaway is that we all are used to seeing everything in binary format — either positive/successful or negative/failure. And that is what is the biggest notion in our minds — false binaries!

Failure might be sudden, but success is incremental, getting gestated and developing gradually. And between the steps, there are failures, which act as steps towards success.

False binaries?

Did Sir Francis meet Giannis — as both seem to be talking about how being persistent is important, but so is a failure.

How do you ensure that you get success? By failing — not by iterating and not by thinking through, but by failing — as failing is not the zero if success is 1 — it is a step towards success — it is the 0.5 to success’s 1.

At True Elements, one way is to look at many failed attempts as learning. But the other way to look at it is — failed ideas as steps towards success — the false binaries to which all of us are victims is a misaligned notion to assess startups. As I had mentioned earlier, it was not a single idea, but a consistent set of failure steps.

You can look at the same as failures and flounder, use ways that might not be right to win, but when you lose, you take it with grace and know that failure is also a step towards success. You cannot, in fact, SHOULD not, always keep winning — else you stop learning, and therefore, stop succeeding.

What if someone has not failed? Maybe they have then skipped a few steps in achieving greatness.

Something I read somewhere is — You don’t find yourself — you have to build yourself — maybe the same is true for a startup — you don’t just find a startup idea that was waiting to be discovered — that’s just a small beginning. But what you have to do is build it step by step, intertwined with failures — failures are just the dots you connect and build it step by step.

You learn when you are at your lowest. Had Sir Drake not failed in his expeditions, he might have never explored the world. Giannis also believed that you could not keep winning all the time, in spite of being from the top-seed NBA team.

While the world does not want consistent losers, it also does not want consistent winners — the best is to be an inconsistent winner. Remove the notion of False binaries!

And if you are confused, just remember…

Sic Parvis Magna

Stfu!

Francis Drake, Giannis WSJ, Francis Drake Image, Giannis Image

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.