Today’s entrepreneurs face a heady landscape. As the AI explosion shrinks creation costs and barriers to entry, the journey from idea to market can seem shorter and faster than ever. And that’s true—to an extent. But some things aren’t changing. While technological innovation can accelerate company formation, it can’t rewrite the fundamentals of building sustainable success.
Founders with a two- or three-year vision are a dime a dozen, but many of them won’t be around much longer than that. To create a truly generational business, you have to be thinking a decade into the future from day one.
In the 16 years since I cofounded Thumbtack, a fast-growing and profitable home services marketplace that’s helping millions of homeowners get projects done, I’ve seen over and over again how important it is to build for the long game. Here’s my advice for the entrepreneurs beginning their startup journey now.
Be the best not the first
Artificial intelligence has unleashed dizzying changes. Whole fields will be upended, seemingly overnight. What do you do when the world is moving so fast? You avoid the temptation to join the race. First doesn’t matter nearly as much as best—and best will win in the long run.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos knows a few things about building long-term success, and here’s his take on timelines: “If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that.”
That includes investing the time needed to come up with the right business. Technology companies are much more often limited by a lack of good ideas than by a lack of arms and legs. AI can help us execute and scale more quickly, but it can’t tell us what to work on. Before you hit the launch button, make sure you’ve got a clear vision for the big problem you’re going to solve, and then work backwards to figure out how to do that and what it’s going to take.
Build depth through immersion
In a world where AI can turn generalists into self-styled experts, what matters most will be the kind of perspective, taste, and judgment you can only get by working in a domain. That firsthand experience will help you find the kind of contrarian—and correct—insights that can set your company apart.
When we were first building our home services marketplace, everyone told us that we should pick a single category first rather than trying to be all things to homeowners. But homeowners don’t need a place to find one specific kind of pro—they need a place where they can bring any problem or want that comes up in their home. We got that right from the beginning.
But we also learned through experience. Conventional wisdom said that customers wouldn’t want to provide a lot of information about the kind of pro they needed. They’d just want to get connected with a pro right away and take it from there. But that turned out to be wrong. What customers care about is getting the right pro for their needs on the first try, and they’re willing to give as many details as it takes to make that happen.
Seek solutions, but fall in love with vision and impact
Solutions are the practical side of company-building—are you effectively addressing the challenge or need you’ve identified? But they’re also a moving target. Solutions change over time, sometimes dramatically. And sometimes they take longer to materialize than you’d like.
When you’re building for the long game, your self-worth and happiness can’t depend on whether you’ve achieved your goal yet. You have to get satisfaction from the process and the journey, and from the impact you’re having along the way towards your bigger purpose.
Today we still have work to do to fully realize our vision, which also means there’s still a lot of upside for our business. In the meantime, hearing from our customers and pros about the difference we’ve already made in their lives has been incredibly sustaining and a big motivator. Reaching the finish line for our solution will be an amazing feeling, but knowing we’re on the right track feels pretty great right now.
Focus on speed of learning—not just speed of execution
Doing big things often means going into uncharted territory where you have to build your own map and worldview. You can’t just guess. You have to reason from first principles, build a hypothesis, and then test it against reality to learn, iterate, and evolve from there.
In the AI era, speed of execution isn’t nearly as challenging or differentiating as it once was. Once you’ve got the right plan, you’ll be able to move as quickly as you need to. Speed of learning, on the other hand, can help you come up with that right plan while others are still speeding down dead-ends.
You have to be committed to a strong point of view to navigate a vast solution space. But you also have to be open to better tactics—and actively seek them out.
Don’t assume you have all the answers and don’t assume that anyone else does either. Go deep and learn by doing.
Make it a team sport
Here’s another saying that you’ve probably heard: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
Company-building is a long road, and you have to invest in the team, the organization, and the institution that will help you travel it. Gather like-minded people who share your passion, vision, and values, and lean on them early and often. When challenges arise, it’s your team as much as your technology that will help you pull through.
The same extends to your investors. Make sure your early backers understand where your business stands now and what it’ll take to get where you’re going. The best seed investors know that new companies need the space to explore, learn, try, fail, pivot, and evolve, and that calls for patient money from a team player.
Take care of yourself
These long-term voyages require buoyancy. There will be trying moments that pull you under. Will you be able to come back up and keep going? Being smart isn’t enough. Successful founders have the resilience and tenacity, and maybe just sheer stubbornness, to drive them onward no matter how rough things get.
Remember too that sustainability is measured in decades, not months. There are moments when you’ll have to push hard, but you can only last so long on 20-hour days and sleeping bags on the office floor. To build a great business, you have to manage your stress, balance your life, keep an eye on your health, and maintain perspective on who you are and what you’re doing.
The goal isn’t to change the world overnight. It’s to change the world forever. With the right vision and the patience to build for the long game, there’s nothing you can’t do.
Read more:
- My tech startup failed due to 3 mistaken assumptions—entrepreneurs take note
- How our ping pong startup hit a $50M valuation in 5 years by tapping into automation
- I’ve led multiple tech businesses. This is the biggest mistake startup leaders make
- How we built our bootstrapped startup different and sold it for $40M. (Hint: We ignored some myths)
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 Fortune.
