Aim for the stars, but don’t let it get to your head.

How to be ambitious in your vision while keeping it real

I was reading a post by Bryce Roberts from Startup Grind on how startups are being overambitious nowadays. It bases on the fact that all startups are trying to come up with world changing visions à la Elon Musk with his masterplan for Tesla or his ambition to colonize Mars. He argues that it’s more sane to start with more humble ambitions and grow them into more visionary ones as you make progress.

I’m pretty conservative in the way I view things for being a serial entrepreneur, but I have to disagree on this one. Entrepreneurs have not just the power, but also the obligation to be ambitious and want to change the world. Because if they don’t, who will?

Our world is changing ever faster and the reason why we will be more and more ambitious as time goes by is because companies are achieving ever more grandiose milestones (taking us to Mars is pretty badass). Kids in garages have built today’s biggest companies in a matter of years thanks to the speed at which technology evolves and its compound effect. What will be of today’s startups in 10 years? Only our wildest imagination can tell.

I do think though that it’s important to make a distinction between aiming for the stars and not keeping our feet on the floor. When we defined our vision at source{d} we first defined our ultimate goal and after that we looked at what’s the first intermediate mission we need to accomplish to get closer to that. Our vision helps us keep our culture, purpose and motivation where it needs to be to achieve great things as well as avoiding distractions in the development of our technology that may be driven by short-term financial metrics. Our mission helps us execute and create real value everyday.