Serena Williams is my new favorite athlete (and if you work in the start-up industry she should be yours too)
www.sneakerheadvc.com
This weekend Carrie and I went to the U.S. Open for the women’s final with friends who are big into tennis and have absurd seats. We were 15 feet from Serena on the baseline and I was blown away. I had never thought playing tennis was like running a start-up, but watching Serena work put the metaphor in my head. At a startup you are experimenting all the time, winning some, failing some but always pushing the limits of what is possible based on your instinct at the time. Sort of like tennis in terms of cadence. The cadence of tennis is also all about running experiments, learning and moving on. You do this on each point within the context of a game, a set and a match. The strategy you bring to each point needs to fit within a longer term plan to win the match and some points matter more than others so the intensity is variable as well.
Serena Williams is my new favorite athlete (and if you work in the start-up industry she should be yours too)
Serena Williams is my new favorite athlete…
Serena Williams is my new favorite athlete (and if you work in the start-up industry she should be yours too)
This weekend Carrie and I went to the U.S. Open for the women’s final with friends who are big into tennis and have absurd seats. We were 15 feet from Serena on the baseline and I was blown away. I had never thought playing tennis was like running a start-up, but watching Serena work put the metaphor in my head. At a startup you are experimenting all the time, winning some, failing some but always pushing the limits of what is possible based on your instinct at the time. Sort of like tennis in terms of cadence. The cadence of tennis is also all about running experiments, learning and moving on. You do this on each point within the context of a game, a set and a match. The strategy you bring to each point needs to fit within a longer term plan to win the match and some points matter more than others so the intensity is variable as well.