Now is the time for startups

Speaking at Startup Night at District Hall in the heart of Boston’s Innovation District, MassChallenge CEO John Harthorne had a tough but ultimately encouraging message for aspiring entrepreneurs — the startup world is full of fear, failure and frustration, but if you have a passion for what you are doing and the will to work hard, success is possible.

“Doing a startup is a surreal process. It is really hard and it is full of a lot random chance and luck and surreal moments … and also a lot of trauma and suffering and unknowns,” Harthorne said. “You have to be really thick-skinned or crazy — or both — to get through it.”

According to Harthorne, when first starting a business there is nothing but fear because it is a constant balancing act between decisions that move the business, forward and decisions that can plummet the business into the abyss of failure.

Fits and starts

Many businesses formulate around one idea for an end product and face challenges in putting a supporting organization in place around the idea. The mistakes made in doing this can lead to a constant cycle of failures and setbacks. Harthorne called these “debilitating” but the expected stepping stones on the path forward for any business.

He experienced this at MassChallenge after starting the company five years ago.

“We had a great idea and we had a good team and we kept plugging away and we made more good decisions than bad ones. So you just gradually take two steps forward and one step back and you are gradually making progress and if you just care enough and you don’t give up, you eventually just push through,” Harthorne said.

He also didn’t shy away from the notion that entrepreneurs may be involved in several failing business ventures until they get it right. This is all part of the process as well, because lessons learned during an early business failure could be the key to ultimate success with another startup.

While Harthorne is a startup entrepreneur in his own right he perhaps is more acutely attuned to comment on the launch of a company than most because MassChallenge is in the business of startups.

Located in the Seaport District, MassChallenge is a startup accelerator that helps entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground, providing everything from office space to mentors to connections with investors. The organization runs an annual application process for interested startups. In 2014, 1,650 startups from 50 countries and 40 states applied. Since 2010, the 617 startups supported by MassChallenge have raised over $706 million in funding, generated $404 million in revenue and created 4,800 jobs.

Harthorne sees on a daily basis what makes a startup succeed. His goal is to share that advice with others.

He cautions against trying to grow too quickly before a startup — or the startup team — is ready, but at the same time he warns against too humble a vision because the effort to establish a small business is not that much different than what it takes to establish a big business. He stressed the need to think big.

“By thinking big you attract big thinkers. Those are the people that have the knowledge and the influence and the funding that helps you to get stuff done. If you propose a small initiative you will attract other people who like small initiatives and they will help you and that will work and that is fine, but it is really not that different to go big,” he said. “So go all in and say, Why not? Go big.”

Renaissance 2.0

Referring to his own startup roots, the MIT Sloan School of Management grad told the tale of how MassChallenge was able to get funding from the state and some of the state’s most successful entrepreneurs because the vision was to impact the entire economy of the state, the country and even beyond to other countries.

“Our stated mission is we are going to instigate a period of renaissance globally. By empowering the creative class and restoring creativity to the soul of the economy we are going to put away this medieval architecture of short-term profit and instead focus on solving the world’s problems together, integrating art and science and technology around improving the human condition. We are going to create massive amounts of wealth and a period renaissance,” he said. “That is a crazy mission.”

But it was just crazy enough to impress — and get MassChallenge the funding it needed.

While extolling his passion for working in the startup world, Harthorne also supports working in a traditional corporate business at some point, particularly pre-startup. He values his prior experience at Bain Capital, for example, though he did not enjoy it. He believes you can learn a lot from the organization and structure of the corporate world that can be very useful in a startup environment.

Harthorne capped off his talk by saying now is as good a time to start a business, particularly with advances in technology allowing for so much infrastructure savings.

“It gets cheaper and cheaper every day to launch a startup,” he said.

The interest in the startup world also is booming again, so entrepreneurs can find great workers to come on board pretty easily.

“It is cool to be in startups so there is a lot of labor that is interested. There is a lot of talent that would otherwise have gone to investment banking or consulting or finance,” he said. “There is real talent in the market.”

“I am super optimistic about now,” he added. Though like all passionate entrepreneurs he countered this by saying anytime you are ready to start a business you should do it. He is a firm believer of going for it and jumping in.