Find The Fast Moving Water

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Original Article: Find The Fast Moving Water

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Technology and markets are like a river. Some parts are running faster, some slower, and some are eddies sending you backward. Currents are created by the technology, market segment, language, distribution channels, teammates and beliefs in your part of the world.

You need to cultivate the rare skill of assessing the speed and direction of the water surrounding you at all times.

“Find the fast moving water” is a concept that we communicate to our NFX Guild Founders from day 1. This way of thinking has been so adopted within our network that we hear them teaching it to their teams and other founders on a daily basis. So we wanted to write down what it is.

Founders: It’s your job to learn how to read the river, and then have the courage to steer your company into the fast moving water.

Because when great ideas and teams find the fast moving water, watch out. Little can stand in your way.

Fast vs. Not Fast

To build a truly meaningful company, you need to be honest with yourself about where you are. The Founders in the NFX Guild are *not* satisfied with “Not Fast,” “Pretty Good” or “Okay.”

This can be both hard and uncomfortable, because sometimes you don’t even realize that you’re in slow-moving water.

After all, things might be going well.

Maybe you’ve read about the hidden patterns of great startup ideas and already determined that your idea is in the “fertile soil” category and thankfully not in the “will definitely fail” category. Check.

You probably have something that is progressing with customers and revenue and you’re moving up the Ladder of Proof. Check.

You might feel the timing is right. You might even have product-market fit. Check check.

I know you feel you’re working hard. But are you doing all the work? Are you not getting much help from step-changes in technology? Not much push from a market segment growing all around you? Not much excitement around your language? Not much amplification from a new distribution channel? Not attracting the best talent?

Is the current speed and acceleration of your startup, right now, proof enough that it’s worth continuing for the next 10 years of your life?

When you get in the fast moving water, you know it. Everything lights up at once. Everyone wants you. Customers, teammates, investors, press.

If that’s not what you’re feeling, you’re not in it.

Finding the fast moving water is about having the courage to shoot for greatness.

The First Time I Found Fast Moving Water…

…was back in 2003. I was working on a consumer media website dedicated to photo storage. 10,000’s of people were using it, and they were quite content to have a new way to store their photos. We felt like we had found product-market fit and felt the timing was right for “something with photos.” But we weren’t in the fast moving water.

It sounds simple now, but it was non-obvious then, that the real current rippling through the industry was related to photo sharing, not photo storage. We tweaked the language on our site from “Store Photos” to “Share Photos.” The site immediately started growing virally, and within six months, we had registered 47 million users.

That fast moving water propelled the online photography and s...

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