Peter Drucker, perhaps the greatest business guru of the 20th Century, once remarked that innovators are often disappointed by the manner in which their innovations become popular. In his 1985 book, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Drucker relates the story of Alfred Einhorn, who invented Novocain, which then became popular with dentists as a local anesthetic. Einhorn held a contempt for dentistry, since it represented such a small niche of medicine. He felt that Novocain should be used by surgeons for all forms of surgery, and so he waged a campaign against the use of Novocain by dentists. In the end, his innovation was successful despite him, rather than because of him. According to Drucker, this pattern, where a product or service is undercut by the entrepreneur who is trying to promote it, is extremely common.

When I first read Drucker’s book I found it hard to believe that an entrepreneur would actively sabotage their own innovation. However, having now spent several years working with startups, I’ve seen that it is, indeed, a common pattern. Many entrepreneurs starts websites at least in part because they consider themselves uniquely creative and insightful, and they want the whole world to see them as they see themselves. The website they launch proves them wrong: their insights are proven false, what works in the end is something unexpected. For instance, in 1992, when Bo Peabody launched Tripod, he was thinking that the site would offer content aimed at college students. His idea failed. The company was saved because some of the programmers at the company had started a side project that allowed anyone to create their own web pages. This then became the future of the company. In his book, Lucy or Smart, Peabody says it is important to be smart enough to know when you are getting lucky. And then, you have to be willing to accept that luck. This takes humility. What’s needed in an entrepreneur is emotional resilience, the kind of strength that allows for openness to the unexpected.

Twice now I’ve seen an entrepreneur sabotage their own website because it became successful for what they felt were the wrong reasons. This emotional resistance to success is nearly always inspired by one of two factors:

1.) The success is with a small niche. The startup was suppose to grow till it was larger than Google, and success with a small niche is, therefore, extremely disappointing. The niche might be big enough to potentially generate several million in revenue, but it won’t ever be enough to catch up with Google.

2.) The success is of a conventional type and, therefore, the entrepreneur regards it as boring. Perhaps the site was suppose to pioneer an altogether new style of interaction among humans, and instead the part of the site that becomes popular is of an old type – for instance, the blog on the site becomes highly successful. The entrepreneur is then disappointed, maybe even angry, to be the owner of a boring success.

Drucker also emphasized how much self-sabotage tends to trip up entrepreneurs. I documented a case of this in my own book, How To Destroy A Tech Startup In Three Easy Steps:

https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Three-Steps-eboo...