Introduction
Facebook is widely considered as one of the most popular social media platforms and successful companies in the world ever since it launched back in 2004. In its very early days, the website gained thousands of users who were mostly university students. The team behind it then saw a huge opportunity to build a platform to connect people from all over the world even in the most remote and underprivileged places. I witnessed this first-hand when I noticed even my cousins from Madagascar, one of the poorest countries in the world, actively use the Facebook app just like anyone else back here in Canada. When I went back there in 2019, even a LOT of other low-income citizens (living with less than 1 USD$ a day) without access to basic proper housing had the latest smartphones and would use Facebook as their primary app! Looking back, I still can’t wrap my head around how much it really changed the world in such a short amount of time and despite even in countries with extreme poverty. That really fueled my curiosity and I decided to learn a lot about Facebook’s founders, their initial version, their backgrounds and their timeline for building it. I have also watched the Social Network movie even though I am aware reality was nowhere near as glamourous as it is portrayed in it.
In doing all of this research, I stumbled on a motto that the founders agreed upon to instill in all of the members of their team which was the following:
Move fast and break things.
Mark Zuckerberg
I pondered on this one for a long time, because even after many years, I still think it remains deeply true when it comes to entrepreneurship. Facebook itself was not perfect at the beginning and yet, people were so obsessed with it (including me) and it had to evolved quickly just to keep up with the onslaught of traffic. In this blog post, I will elaborate on the motto’s importance, drawbacks and on my personal approach with it.
Importance
Moving fast can be interpreted in many ways whether in life or in business. For the sake of this discussion, I am going to define it simply as a perpetual cycle of trying as many things as possible (also known as trial and error) until you succeed in however ways you define it.
1. It Shorten Learning Cycles
Moving fast allows to validate many entrepreneurial ideas one after the other. Essentially, you need to prove whether any given one will attract an actual audience or customers. By not moving fast, you risk sitting on an idea that most likely will not be your breakthrough discovery. A widely agreed-upon truth amongst entrepreneurs is that most initial ideas will fail. If you spend one month building an idea that will never get you anywhere and realize after all of that time that it was not worth it, then you would be in a whole lot more trouble financially, mentally or even physically than if you had realized it for example after one week. Moving fast forces you to notice patterns in the market, customer feedback and audience engagement simultaneously, because you fail faster.
2. It Combats Overthinking
Overthinking can really paralyze us and I have succumbed to it many times as well. When it comes to putting ourselves out there by launching a business idea, we can be held back by millions of doubts. Moving fast implores us not to formulate millions of hypothesis and only then experiment a little, but to just experiment A LOT and deal with the consequences (good or bad).
Drawbacks
1.You Need An Undying Hunger For Success
Moving fast requires a lot of energy which is not innate in all of us (including me). I am naturally a very chill and normal guy who happens to be a first-time entrepreneur. Sprinting as hard as I can towards an idea is really tough both mentally and physically on me. I have to stay sharp mentally by focusing on the task at hand while worrying about hitting the right metrics (growing followers, subscribers or website traffic organically). I also have to keep myself healthy by exercising while being happy doing it. It can take a major toll on you especially if a lot of personal money is at stake for the entrepreneurial idea to work.
2.You Will Break Precious Things
Breaking anything is bad, but breaking precious things is soul-crushing. As a first-time entrepreneur, you will make so many mistakes and break so many things that are potentially too precious to be broken. This applies not only in business, but also in other areas of your life. Like I mentioned, I should not forget to exercise, because otherwise my body will break down from just staying in front of the computer for long hours.
My Approach As A Content Creator
As a first-time content creator, I had zero clue which idea of videos, articles or posts would work, but I just published whatever I felt like writing, filming or posting about. As a consequence, a lot of my content is very random, because I am just explaining or filming my mundane life. I watched a lot of video tutorials on getting started and becoming successful, but instead of trying to nail down the perfect content idea with the perfect equipment, I just launched… Also, I came across a very important tip while learning about any minimum viable product which is the fact that nobody will care about a launch. So far, it remains accurate, because my blog still has 0 traffic after 6 months of hard work😰. That means that no matter how much I believed that something will work, I will never truly know unless I publish it. Even in July 2023, when I launched my Instagram account, I had no idea how to become big on the platform. However, I just understood that it was meant for uploading pictures so I just went ahead and uploaded ones that I liked without much thought. There probably is an optimal strategy behind it such as right timing, best filters tagging other accounts or using trending hashtags, etc. However, in the move fast and break things approach, I just wanted to generate some momentum for my account and figure some stuff out along the way. Over time though, I do improve each and every piece of content and not just simply upload mindlessly. However, I always try to move fast by publishing stuff out there as quickly as I can without compromising too much on their quality. But then again, I don’t obsess over quality, because I know that some videos will do better than others despite being of lower quality. Moving fast also prompted me to reach out to other early travel bloggers in an attempt to speed up my success rate.
Conclusion
In short, I am still convinced that moving fast and breaking things is an excellent universal advice for first-time entrepreneurs. It becomes even more essential if money is on the line, because it is literally a countdown until it runs dry. If anything, moving fast removes all of the previously discussed barriers and makes you move forward towards your goals and dreams.
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