The Sherlock Holmes Fantasy
Your startup is in crisis. Revenue is tanking. The board is nervous. Your best engineer just quit.
Your brain screams for a silver bullet. One genius move. One brilliant pivot. One Sherlock Holmes deduction that saves everything.
Marc Andreessen has watched this movie a hundred times. The silver bullet never comes.
There's this temptation to think there must be a magical solution. There are no silver bullets. Only lead bullets.
Lead Bullets Win Wars
Ben Horowitz taught Andreessen this lesson. The answer is always lead bullets. Boring, grinding, relentless lead bullets.
Engineers work later for six months. Sales reps call twice as many customers. You go find investors willing to buy when your stock is in the gutter.
None of it is glamorous. All of it works.
The answer is engineers working later and sales reps calling more.
Why This Is Hard to Accept
Silver bullets feel romantic. Lead bullets feel like punishment.
But the entrepreneurs who survive do the unglamorous work. They fire the lead bullets day after day until the crisis breaks.
Confidence returns. The stock ticks up. Customers start buying again. Not because of a masterstroke. Because of volume.
Confidence returns through volume, not genius.
The Practical Advice
Next time you are in a crisis, skip the brainstorm for the magic solution.
Ask: what are ten small things we can do this week? Then do them. Then do ten more next week.
The way out is through. And 'through' looks like a lot of lead bullets.
The way out is through. And through looks like a lot of lead bullets.