That quote, by Simon Vallee, product manager at Slack resonated with me at the Product Hunt One Year Anniversary event last Thursday Aug 27th in Toronto. That event was organized by Daryna Kuyla of Deloitte's Digital Innovation Lab, and attended by over 450 people.

I tweeted that statement along with its corollary that Simon echoed:

If you stop being relentless, you're screwed.

It is true that most startups initially face a tremendous amount of skepticism about their product, to the point of being often ridiculed, because they are seen as going against all odds. That's normal, and that is a common starting point. And I would add to the statement that it's not just building a great product that's difficult. It's about getting out into the market.

If everything in a startup was so obvious, the business would look more like a franchise, and not a startup. In a franchise, they hand you the book and processes on how to operate the business, and they supply you with what you need. They even choose your location based on optimal traffic. You just show-up and operate the business.

When bringing a truly innovative product into a new market that doesn’t exist yet, or is ill defined, you are not always competing with other products. Rather, you’re competing with user habits, their time, and whether they believe in your ideas or not. And if you are targeting businesses with your product, companies have already engrained processes that are old, and take time to change.

Even established companies need to continue being relentless. Imagine if UBER caved in to the local cities and taxi cartels objections. Instead, they continued plugging away, and have been relentless in pushing and propagating their agenda and services worldwide, into every area that justified their business case, even if the cities objected to it.

Every year, thousands of new tech startups are founded. Several hundreds will make headlines, a few hundreds will acquire significant users and customers. But only a few dozens will make a lasting difference and stick with our habits, have us either buy their product/service or use their App.

You are fighting the universe, because the universe is complicated and doesn't want to change. And there will be several barriers and challenges along the way.

As a startup, you are lifting a lot of weight in order to get noticed, to continue plugging and to win. Being relentless means that you never stop, even if you stumble and fall along the way.

What is important is to have the determination to finish. To join these two metaphors, you need to watch this incredible video of athlete Heather Dorniden Kampf who takes a terrible fall during a 600 meters race. Nonetheless, she gets up even more energized and determined to finish the race. How she ends the race is nothing short from spectacular. Trust me and click on this short 2:48 minutes video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjejTQdK5OI&feature=youtu.be]]>