You, as an entrepreneur, should have a trajectory towards upside defined around a new and better normalization of truth (upstream), and then determine your preferred critical path towards achieving such new normal. Because a new normalization of truth yields a brand-new decision-tree of critical paths, your ways of achieving such upside are many. And as an investor investing in the right entrepreneur, I would not be too worried as long as the normalization of truth does not get substantially diminished in impact or value. However, as an entrepreneur, you may need to sell me more of your company if it appears the switching cost from your initial critical path requires more capital.
The problem, of course, appears when at the behest of sub-prime investing (deal collusion, fragmentation, and syndication) so prevalent in venture capital today many investors (sometimes unknowingly) attach themselves to the same kinds of downstream innovations, through which there is only one path, and alternatives are extremely limited.
So, the key for entrepreneurs and investors is to invent and attach to big ideas, defined by a healthy disdain for the status quo that yields a new normalization of truth with a new decision-tree and a plethora of options through which that objective can be secured.
You may notice the paradox of innovation and investing here. Implied by the notion that while most entrepreneurialism today evolves around quick-and-easy low-cost downstream optimizations of an existing truth heavily susceptible to volatility, the pursuit of, and investment in big ideas appear more risky and costly on the outset, yet conversely yields a dramatic reduction of risk to achieve the stated goals.
So no, I don’t want to hear about a plan B. There will be many other options if your idea is big enough, but you better make sure I do not come up with a better plan A. For it means I should be running the company, not you.
