Coming to Certainty

I enjoy spending time with entrepreneurs that have synthesized the world, spotted an opportunity, and are pursuing it with mission-focused passion.  Their level of certainty creates the persistence necessary to introduce a new solution.  It makes me smile (and sometimes cringe) to listen to excited pitches of young people with certainty.

William Stafford describes coming to a conclusion–bundling knowledge, a logic model of cause and effect, and a little lightning:

Learning, they call it, this anticipated

lightning, this thinking around an event

and bringing it right.  It is hard to tell

if the connection is yours, or the world’s—

it all comes together and you say, “I know.”

Because many ventures end up in a different place than they started (in conversation this week, Jamie Daves, City Light Capital, pointed out this unique openness of venture capital to new destinations), entrepreneurs need enough certainty to persist and enough humility to say “I don’t know.”