Stress testing you: are you up to the big idea?

David Kirk is a former Rhodes scholar, All Black and Rugby World Cup winning captain and currently the co-founder and managing partner of Bailador, an ASX-listed investment fund. In addition, he is the chair of both the NZ Food Network and KiwiHarvest.

OPINION: Literature, ancient and modern, is full of commentary on human nature and on the value of attempting to understand ourselves. A wise business person also seeks self-awareness.

Two thousand years before the birth of Christ, in the forecourt of Apollo’s temple at Delphi in Greece, three maxims were inscribed in stone, the first of which is “Know Thyself”. 

We have talked about stress-testing an idea to start a not-for-profit. Now we are stress-testing you. Do you know yourself? Are you up to what will be required to make the idea a successful reality?

The first thing to get straight is that this is not an evaluation of whether you are good or bad, capable or incapable, smart or not. This is all about fit. There are certain attributes that are necessary to start a business – profit or not-for-profit - from scratch. The good news is if you don’t have all the attributes, you can learn them or team up with a partner.

In fact, two people partnering to start a business is more common than one. When it is only one, that’s usually because the one is super-driven and just about impossible for a partner to work with – Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and closer to home, Graeme Hart come to mind (this is not a criticism. Graeme will happily tell you he is obsessive about everything he does).

So, what are the key attributes required of a start-up founder?

Focus is crucial. It’s important not to get distracted. The big goal is clear – to get the venture up and running – but you need to focus on the building blocks required to achieve the big goal, such as investigating the market opportunity, thinking through a plan, talking to people in the industry and identifying possible sources of funding. There will be lots of details and distractions. You need to stay focused.

Analytical capability is the ability to recognise a problem and analyse what is required to turn the problem into an opportunity to build a business. In food rescue the problem is hungry people. Some of the pieces of the problem are excess food availability, appropriate food recipients, food transport, food storage, people, the cost of it all and sources of funding. The pieces of the problem need to be organised into an operating plan – what we are going to do every day – and a budget – what will it cost to do it. It was this kind of analytical problem solving that enabled KiwiHarvest and the New Zealand Food Network to get off the ground.

The ability to sell is important. Really this means the ability to explain to others, with passion and clarity, what the problem is, how it can be solved and that with help you are the right person to solve it. You’re not selling a tomato or a banana but something that is good for other people. You are selling your passion, your commitment, your plan and other people’s well-being.

The ability to inspire other people is another key attribute for a not-for-profit founder. How do you inspire people to come on the journey when you pay less than they can get elsewhere, the work is tiring and never-ending, and stuff goes wrong pretty regularly. It’s not exactly as UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill put it in his first address to the House of Commons in May 1940 – “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” - But take out the blood and you won’t be far off.

Finally, and obviously, all founders have a great capacity for hard work. You are going to need to make some sacrifices to succeed in your aim to start something new and take it on to longer-term success. Figure out how much time you have to commit and only commit what you can to the task. If you are founding a business, the time commitment will be more than you have got, at least for a while.

Next time I will talk about a fundamental building block of starting and running a not-for-profit: measuring the good you do.