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You may think you know this story. Two inventors in a garage build something special, move to Silicon Valley, get a bajillion dollars of seed capital, hire a ton of people, turn it into a multimillion-dollar business overnight, and change the world as we know it. You think of Zuck or Musk (or Gates or Jobs, if you prefer) and believe this is the way entrepreneurship \u201chappens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Except it doesn\u2019t usually happen like that. In fact, it rarely happens like that. Startup mythology is extremely compelling; many aspiring and current founders think that if you simply follow the pop-culture approach to business you\u2019ll be more successful. After all, those companies achieved the coveted \u201cunicorn\u201d status.<\/p>\n
But the truth is many entrepreneurs follow the stereotypical startup journey, yet it doesn\u2019t do them any favors. Consider that 70% of all startups fail in years two to five<\/a>, or that approximately 80% of tech and e-commerce startups fail, or even that 75% of all venture-backed startups go belly up.<\/strong><\/p>\n Going further, and challenging the funding myth in particular, consider that brands such as Nike<\/a>, Shopify<\/a>, GoPro<\/a>, Basecamp<\/a>, Vuori<\/a>, GitHub<\/a>, and literally hundreds more all bootstrapped their way to multibillion-dollar valuations.<\/p>\n We want the mythology to be reality. We want to believe that if we follow the same recipe, the same lucrative outcomes will follow for us. We want validation from our peers that what we\u2019re doing is <\/em>actually a good idea. We want to believe that in an instant we could make a pile of money while simultaneously changing the world.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a better, myth-free way to reach your startup dreams. Or at least, that\u2019s what happened to me. I cofounded a SaaS startup, called AppArmor<\/a>, with my brother. We avoided seed capital like the plague and instead \u201cfunded\u201d our company with a revolutionary new model\u2014our customers. We didn\u2019t pack up our lives and move to the Valley. We gave the market time to develop, rather than trying to \u201cget big fast.\u201d We over-invested in customer service. We led our team like actual<\/em> alphas do\u2014with empathy. We took on the VC-backed firms and major market players with ease. We became one of the fastest-expanding companies nationwide, with triple-digit year-over-year growth.<\/p>\n And after 10 years we sold for $40 million. Yeah, you\u2019re right, that\u2019s not a unicorn\u2014not even a narwhal. But for us, it unlocked generational wealth while helping us achieve our company\u2019s mission on a tremendous scale.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not here to be a startup prophet. Our journey was a slog, and we absolutely did not do everything right. Hell, we occasionally even bought into certain startup myths that lead to catastrophic results (more on that in a second). But the way we built, scaled, and supported our business was a more fulfilling and efficient way to professional success.<\/p>\n We share more in our upcoming book<\/a>, Startup Different: The Myth-Busting Blueprint for your Multi-Million Dollar Business<\/em>.<\/p>\n But what does it mean to startup different<\/em>? There are two distinct components: operational and psychological. In the first case, we were deeply skeptical of anything we felt \u201cwe ought to do\u201d because<\/em> we were a startup. This runs the gamut from how we built our product to how we treated our staff to having a beer keg in the office (although, to be fair, we did briefly<\/em> buy into that last one). Stereotypical startup malarky instantly became a red flag.<\/p>\n Some of this was learned through painful experience. For example, we believed the myth that startup culture was largely the same across all aspiring unicorns. To that end, we tried to copy the Netflix<\/a> culture and make it our own. But it was a disaster and put our company back at least a few years. In our book, we describe this tremendous misstep in detail:<\/p>\n \u201cOh man. We knew we had messed up. The issue was that we were not Netflix. Not even close. Not the same market, customers, nothing. Chris and I didn\u2019t even work like Netflix would have intended\u2014we came in at 9:00, worked our butts off, limited our time off, and wore a certain level of attire. While there were some Netflix ideas we enjoyed and kept as we grew AppArmor, the fact of the matter was that we didn\u2019t understand, and frankly didn\u2019t entirely like, the Netflix culture. This was our culture failure.\u201d<\/p>\n The ship that was our startup\u2019s culture was listing aimlessly at sea, leading our entire<\/em> staff<\/em> to jump overboard. We had to rehire our whole team and determine what culture meant to us, all because we believed a single<\/em> startup myth. Looking back on this moment, I recall wondering if it was all over.<\/p>\n Critically challenging any idea, particularly those that are rooted in the success of other startups, is a must for any entrepreneur. It\u2019s one of the many lessons and 33 myths that we explore in our book as we try to pay it forward to our entrepreneurial peers.<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s the psychological element to starting up different. Entrepreneurs crave credibility, validity, and legitimacy for their business. When the credibility crisis hits, founders start looking for answers in all the wrong places. Suddenly they want their startup to become what peers or society think it ought<\/em> to be, which leads to short-term non-empirical decision making. Their business challenges snowball into a startup failure avalanche.<\/p>\n People were often deeply skeptical of our firm, telling us we were \u201cfunemployed,\u201d simply a \u201clifestyle business,\u201d or even (outrageously) \u201cnot a startup.\u201d Still, when we pushed back on our skeptics, we were always stunned that little to no evidence<\/em> was provided as to why their suggestion was going to help us. They were outsiders looking in at our business, but with very specific, Shark Tank<\/em>-esque, and sometimes bizarre expectations as to what our business ought to be.<\/p>\n But resisting the urges of the dark side of the entrepreneurship-force is no trivial task; still, it remains essential to any different<\/em> startup\u2019s success. Sure, you could get lucky following a pop-culture approach to business, but the odds are against you. Channel your inner Luke while silencing your inner Anakin.<\/p>\n We focused on validation in the market<\/em> instead of the validation of our peers. It didn\u2019t matter to us that we didn\u2019t have a huge headcount or millions of dollars in funding because we knew we had a well systematized, massively profitable, and (eventually) culturally sound business. The startup noise was just a distraction to us; we knew that the market was rewarding us\u2014and would continue to do so\u2014despite what society was saying our company should do.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Our success isn\u2019t an aberration, and, honestly, it\u2019s not that uncommon. But startup mythology is sexy and it continues to maliciously crush the dreams of entrepreneurs who could have been successful. Increasingly, many businesses out there harbor suspicions of the \u201cstartup BS,\u201d and now I hope you do as well. Be deeply skeptical of startup pop culture the next time you\u2019re considering how to best launch a company or are confronted with a significant business decision. Oh, and tell the misguided haters to shove it. You too can<\/em> startup different.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of\u00a0<\/em>Fortune.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nBeating VC-backed rivals<\/h2>\n
Startup mistakes<\/h2>\n
Validation from the market\u2014not peers<\/h2>\n
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