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Keep Watching the Door
Building something great requires patience. Just don’t forget to enjoy it when the thing you’ve been waiting for finally arrives.
There’s something Tedi does when I leave the house that I love.
Sometimes she’ll walk into the kitchen, position herself where she can see the door, and just stand there.
Waiting for me.
She has absolutely no idea when I’m coming back.
Could be 30 minutes.
Could be three hours.
Doesn’t matter.
She waits.
And eventually, when I walk through that door, I get the exact same reaction every single time.
You would think I had been gone for six months.
Pure excitement.
Every. Single. Time.
And watching her the other day got me thinking about something I see constantly with founders.
We’re all waiting for doors to open.
You send the investor an email.
You wait.
You pitch the customer.
You wait.
You launch the product.
You wait.
You hire someone.
You wait to see if you made the right decision.
You raise the round.
Then you immediately start thinking about the next milestone.
Building a company requires an almost ridiculous amount of patience.
I’ve been investing in and advising early-stage companies for almost a decade, and I can tell you that almost everything takes longer than you think it will.
Rounds take longer.
Sales cycles take longer.
Products take longer.
Hiring takes longer.
Finding product-market fit takes longer.
Even the companies that look like overnight successes from the outside usually have years of work nobody saw behind them.
But here’s the part I think we sometimes get wrong.
Patience doesn’t mean sitting around waiting.
Tedi can get away with staring at the door.
Founders can't. 😂
Your job is to keep working while you wait.
Keep building.
Keep selling.
Keep talking to customers.
Keep following up.
Keep creating opportunities.
Keep putting yourself in a position for the door to eventually open.
But there’s another part of this that I think matters just as much.
When the door finally opens, enjoy the hell out of it.
I see founders hit something they’ve spent six months chasing and almost immediately move the goalposts.
Closed the round?
Great. Now we need to hit $1M ARR.
Landed the big customer?
Great. Who's next?
Hit the revenue target?
Great. What's next quarter look like?
Ambition is important.
But if you never allow yourself to appreciate the moments you worked so hard for, what exactly are you doing all of this for?
That might be the lesson I take from Tedi.
Be patient enough to wait for the door to open.
Work hard enough to give yourself more chances for it to happen.
And when it finally does?
Act like it's the greatest fucking thing that's happened all day.
Because maybe it is.
Until next time—keep building.
Cheers,
Steve Walsh
Hands On Angel
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