A good friend of mine, who is also in the industry, once described real estate development as a three-legged stool. In order to develop, you really need three things: expertise, capital, and a site (i.e. land). This probably seems fairly obvious. I mean, you need to know what you're doing, you need the money to do it, and then you actually need a place to build. But as simple and as obvious as this may seem, there are barriers to entry. Real estate is a capital intensive industry. And despite what the general public seems to believe about the pockets of developers, most are raising outside capital.

The thing about this three-legged stool is that you don't necessarily need to have all of the legs at once, and in many cases you won't. If you have two of them in place, it's usually feasible to figure out and get the last one. For example, if you know what you're doing (expertise) and you have a site (owned or "under control"), then presumably you have a development pro forma that makes some economic sense. And with those things, you generally should be able to find the capital that you need to execute on your project.

I've also met people who have managed to build this three-legged stool starting with only one leg. They didn't have much development experience or capital connections, but they learned enough to figure out how to value development land. They then went out and started knocking on doors, eventually putting together a development assembly. They then took this assembly to developers (people with expertise) and the stool eventually got built. Starting with only one leg just means you're going to have to work harder to fill in the others.

A one or two-legged stool won't stay upright on its own. But hustle will hold it up temporarily while you figure out a creative way to attach the missing leg(s).

Photo by John Boatile on Unsplash

Earlier this week it was announced that Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have resigned from the company. Supposedly it had to do with weakening independence from the parent company, Facebook. But I’m not really in a position to comment on the specifics.

Fred Wilson wrote a good post about the news this week. The point he makes is that it is extremely rare for founders to stay on, at least for extended periods of time, after their company has been acquired. So it is actually quite remarkable that Instagram’s two founders stayed on for 6 years.

But what I really want to talk about today is this quote from Fred’s post: 

“The truth is that many entrepreneurs don’t make for great corporate citizens. Entrepreneurs like to be in charge, to be able to move quickly without a lot of friction, and they like to feel a deep sense of ownership in what they are working on.”

It stood out to me for two reasons. One, because I agree with it. And two, because it reminded me of Daniel Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. His overarching argument is that motivation is intrinsic and that we are best driven by the following: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

That sounds pretty similar to the things that entrepreneurs also seem to like.

Kevin Rose is an internet entrepreneur. He has built a number of consumer products, including Digg in 2004. Previously he was a venture capitalist with Google Ventures, but now he’s doing that with True Ventures. He also hosts a podcast.

This past weekend he posted the following photo to his Instagram:

Here’s the story. 

After begging his mom to take him to the printers, he got this business card made when he was 13 years old. Foliage Software wasn’t a real company, of course. But it had business cards and he was not only a Programmer and the Owner, but a Senior Programmer and the Owner.

I laughed as soon as I saw this post because it is exactly the sort of thing that the 13 year old version of me would have done and probably did. (The combination of upper and lower case letters on the card also helped with the humor.) I’m sure if I dug around my mother’s house I would find a trail of my failed business schemes and project ideas.

But that’s entirely the point he is trying to make. Try. Fail. Learn. Refine. All of these actions will increase your odds of success at the next go around. Nobody will remember the failures anyways.

Seth Godin perhaps said it best with: “The tiny cost of failure is dwarfed by the huge cost of not trying.”