Slow Down to Go Fast

There’s a common belief that going fast will get you to the destination faster, but this is easily proven to be wrong. Going fast is just one factor, but an equally important and perhaps more important factor is your vector. The direction of your travel actually makes a much more important contribution to your arrival time than your speed.

Hustle culture perpetuates the myth that working harder and optimizing everything you do will make you the most effective, but hustle won’t fix your vector.

I recently took a week off to go snowboarding in the French Alps, and it’s quite unusual for me to disconnect for a day, let alone a week. Forcing yourself to slow down also forces reflection, calculation, and processing. Going 1 million miles an hour isn’t the answer unless your direction is dialed in.

This is often true for startups. As an investor, I have an external perspective on many founders and their companies. Many are well-intentioned with strong ideas and visions, but they are on a treadmill that doesn’t have a happy ending. On one hand, I want to support entrepreneurs, but on the other hand, I can tell they are building something the world doesn’t need.

I see 10,000 startups; out of that, perhaps 50-100 have interesting and viable businesses. 800+ have small to serious gaps in their businesses, technical flaws, or co-founder/team dynamics that will cause issues. I’d love to help them all, but I can’t.

Go back to the core theme of going fast… no, going slow helps you go fast.

When I was in college, my sailing coach would tell me that your arrival time is more a function of your departure time than your speed. If you try to get somewhere by noon, leaving a few minutes early is equivalent to driving 20 miles over the speed limit.