By giving unintentional discoveries the chance to come to us, it gets easier to be persistent and never give up hope.
When Eric Ries, author of the book The Lean Startup, brought up this concept, he pointed out the “uncertainty” element as its defining characteristic:
“A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.”
From creating the minimum viable product (MVP) to coming up with the right features for their products, or to finally learn when it’s time to change direction (also known as the pivot), entrepreneurs and teams working at startups face uncertainty almost every day.
With that in mind, I’d like to point out how the concept of serendipity could relieve the pressure of working towards uncertainty, and as a consequence, help entrepreneurs to keep motivated while they’re still looking for the right business solutions.
Serendipity: Chance may favor you
A while ago, I read about realistic optimism, a term used by a few authors in fields such as psychology, neuroeconomics, and the philosophy of success.
The realistic optimist is the one who doesn’t ignore the huge difficulties and uncountable obstacles in their path. However, they also know that chance may favor them.
We call this phenomenon “serendipity”. But what exactly does it mean?
The New Oxford Dictionary defines serendipity as “the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.”
That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have our purpose and plans well defined, work hard on them, and perfect them as time goes by.
On the contrary, what we should interpret from this is that each and every step, decision, approach, networking, course, class, research, and so on, should be perceived as possible windows to new and endless possibilities.
While we’re looking for something, we may find ourselves in front of an even better thing than the one we’d been looking for!
It’s not a matter of faith or luck, but pure math science.
The more attempts we make, the bigger are the probabilities to something positive result from them.
Examples of serendipity: Startups that changed their direction to succeed
The role of serendipity can be seen in the history of startups not only in the struggle to make their initial ideas succeed but also after the long and tortuous process of deciding to pivot.
In other words, it happens when they decide to change direction after learning about their customers’ habits and/or facing the sudden progress of technology at its exponential rate.
Here are a few examples:
- Twitter was originally a podcast subscribing service called Odeo. Fearing the rise of iTunes, the founders changed directions to the micro-blogging platform we know so well today.
- Groupon was originally called The Point, and it was created to improve online fundraising experience. The side project Groupon utilized the “group buying deals” feature from the original project to create the premise behind it today.
- Pinterest was designed to alert customers when their favorite shop items went on sale in nearby stores. But by that time, mobile payments were not as sophisticated. While Tote (its original name) didn’t make for its promise, their platform was a fantastic tool for people to share their favorite collections of images.
- PayPal pivoted at least five times before finding its game-changing model.
- Instagram was once called Burbn, a complicated combination of photo, check-in and planning app. By simplifying its core purpose, its founders shaped up what was going to be a 1 billion active users network.
As chaotic as it may seem, it’s during the process of discovery and towards uncertainty that we see ourselves in front of fantastic things, which we couldn’t even consider before.
Whether you’re the leader of a small startup or member of a product development team, it may be reassuring to keep in mind that, even when things get tougher, serendipity is something that could appear to you in any moment of your struggle.
By giving unintentional discoveries the chance to come to us, it gets easier to be persistent and never give up hope.
Any comments and suggestions? Let me know in the comments below!
