To raise or not to raise?
If I was brought in to run TCLA today, it would be easier to pursue a more audacious path.
I would see my business as a separate vehicle, disconnected from my identity. The risks would not threaten my sense of self or the life I feel lucky to have built, and I would not carry the weight of the last five years into the decisions I make. I would see the industry objectively, rather than being overly concerned about my own reputation as a member within it.
Incremental improvement is low risk. Unless some kind of major scandal happened, I spent too much, or we lost touch with our audience, I could probably keep going indefinitely. I would get to keep doing what I love doing, with the perks of being able to manage my time, work with the people I want to and only very gently push myself outside of my comfort zone.
This is a safe, selfish decision that optimises for my comfort at the cost of the impact we could have. When you get to make all the decisions, it’s easy to tell yourself that you are doing what needs to be done, but I also wonder: Am I trying hard enough? If I looked back on my life, would I regret the decision not to scale the business?
But then I question whether this is my ego talking. As I entertain the prospect of raising money to pursue a more ambitious vision, I wonder whether it’s because I like the idea of saying ‘I raised £X’. I worry about falling into another mimetic trap, this time in the startup world, where I would have a number to tell myself that I am ‘successful’.
I find it harder to get my head around spending money that is invested on the basis of the future potential of a business. Right now, I can clearly see the exchange of value when customers pay for a product or service that we provide. Injecting outside capital into a business adds a layer of abstraction, and I would need to prioritise rapid growth to make the investment justifiable.
I suspect this is a typical journey a founder has to make to better serve the needs of the business. There comes a point when you think you know too much about what works and what doesn’t work that you stop trying things that have not been done before. You get caught up by loss aversion, where it’s disproportionately scary to risk what you have built, particularly when you factor in a baseline of salaries and software costs.
I can see why founders decide to step down for the sake of the success of their business. Sometimes, you are too tied up in the business that you don’t think clearly and you end up actively constraining what the business can achieve. You become the bottleneck.
Long-term, I’m clear on what I want to do, which is to do what we did with TCLA for students and graduates across the world. I want to provide access to information and training to help people think for themselves and develop fundamental skills that will set them up for success in the careers they choose. It’s to build the platform and community that I needed when I was younger. The question is whether I can get out of my own way in order to get there.