There are a lot of parallels between wind sports and startups. One thing we’ve encountered lately with JumpBox is something I can only describe as the tendency to “fight the wind” in our desire to artificially accelerate the pace of adoption. Everyone who’s tried to wind surf for the first time falls into the trap of trying to muscle the sail into position instead of respecting the wind and working with it. You end up completely wearing yourself out on that first day. By day two you’re so physically exhausted that your only option is to learn to work with the wind.

I feel like we just woke up on day two with our startup. We work ourselves into a state of mental gridlock with all these “open loops” as David Allen calls them. And the reality is we’re doing fine and just need to continue to execute and lower our expectations of how fast we can realistically run given our size.

I would be curious to hear from others who are running a small business: a) do you find yourself encountering this same tendency? and b) how have you coped with it and do you have any reliable techniques to relax and “work with the wind?” We’re in an emerging space and we’re not for lack of a killer product at this point- we have incredibly positive feedback from everyone who uses our stuff. Our real issue is that we see such incredible opportunities and yet we can’t tackle them as fast as we’d like and the market itself is still in its infancy. On first glance it seems our greatest challenge is in spreading awareness, but in reality it may be more in developing patience and becoming comfortable with the natural pace of adoption.

Anyone else in the same boat (or on the same surf board)?