Not at all. What I think they’re saying is you have to shift your thinking to get to the next phase.
There is no “inbetween” for startups. You’re either in the discovery phase, or you’re in high growth. Startup Gneome figured out, companies that stay in the discovery phase 2-3x longer grow 20x faster. They also have significantly reduced failure rates.
That would lead one to believe most startups aren’t really startups per se. They think validation is making some pre-sales, go straight to development, and completely skipping the discovery phase. Because it’s very difficult, and no one wants to go through it for that long. Not many investors even know what it is, judging by their responses in Quora.
Many that sell within 3-4 years have really just hyped up their hype phase. Some have a “discovery phase” while executing, but by then the company has usually already scaled. Hence “premature scaling”.
So you have to learn to think 15-28 years into the future. Because that is the average age of a company. And that is your end goal right? Sure you, angels, advisors, etc may all be exited by then. But once you can do that, you can make accurate decisions now that will protect the company’s future.
No matter how many hours I spend staring out a window, at this present moment, I can only project up to $100M in revenue. That is the best my little head can do. And even then, there is no way we can create detailed projections more then 3 years out. Everything else is still very big pictured. It’s still a blurry image in my head.
But I can create a path to navigate the company through the years & through the shifts based on what I discovered by being in the discovery phase. At least.
What we do know, is the IT industry has died. Not in very large companies yet, they are slow. In terms of startup innovation. You have to consider, the current generation of older VCs (‘smart money’) built their careers on the forefront of IT innovation in the 70’s & 80’s. Many of them started their own IT careers as entrepreneurs in their teens- early twenties. This will be their first time seeing a shift away from IT.