Most Real World Successes are not Overnight...

“Making it” as a musician is a lot like winning the lottery. It takes an unlikely combination of luck, timing, grit, and talent. Some break through quickly. Many never do. And some grind long enough for things to finally click.

Matchbox Twenty is an easy band to take for granted. Multiple platinum albums, countless hits, and a household name for anyone over 30. Yourself or Someone Like You was one of the first CDs I ever bought — I’m actually listening to it as I write this.

But their success almost never happened.

On the day their first album was released, their record label folded. Their first single flopped. Shows were mostly empty. They only sold a few hundred records in the first week.

Five months later, something changed.

They showed up to a show in Birmingham and saw something they had not seen before — a line. A local radio program director had started playing “Push,” which became a regional hit, then their second single, and eventually the turning point for the band.

After months of grinding with no traction, they caught a break in a place no one would have expected.

There are a lot of directions you can take that story — persistence, luck, timing. But for me, it comes back to one thing: founder selection.

Specifically, tenacity.

Most companies do not work quickly. Many do not work at all. And even the ones that eventually succeed often take longer than expected.

The founders I have seen succeed tend to have a few things in common: they are deeply curious, they are building something that actually matters to them, and they are relentless.

They do not stop when things get hard. They adjust. They cut burn. They get creative. They keep going.

My best outcomes have come from founders who were not just smart, but obsessed with solving a problem.

My worst outcomes have come from founders who were not fully committed, or were opportunistically chasing a market. When things got difficult — and they always do — they stepped back or made decisions that ended the company.

Before product-market fit, there is no momentum, leverage, or tailwind.

There are just empty shows.

Founders have to find early customers one at a time, spend carefully, and keep going long enough to find something that works.

Some will hit quickly. Others will take time. Many will not get there at all.

But the ones that do tend to share the same trait: they do not stop.

Like Matchbox Twenty, many founders grind for months or years before anything clicks. And when it does, it often looks obvious in hindsight.

It rarely is.

That kind of tenacity is one of the core traits I am underwriting in Fund 3.