Courage. Inner Security. Wisdom.
“Think big, start small, build deep,” is a practice that requires visionary courage and inner security – founders must aim to go big and at the same time be secured with inconspicuous genesis. In my 7th years as an entrepreneur, I am still learning how to apply this mantra daily.
The Courage to Think Big
Traditionally, labour and capital were the primary leverages available to entrepreneurs. Today, the internet has allowed entrepreneurs to gain infinite leverage. Writings, media content, and code can scale infinitely through the internet. This is a superpower available to any founders today. With infinite leverage, there is no reason to think small. Infinite leverage is the reason why founders should have the courage to think big.
When Books & People was founded in 2013, my dream was to make education more equitable in Singapore, but I thought too small. With the internet, the world should have been my market. Even though I intuitively understood that books as products have leverages, I was too young and too immature then to envision the world as my market as a young founder 7 years ago. Learning to think big is an ongoing lesson for me as a founder. Today, Books & People is working to reach every student and educator in Singapore and around the world. Thinking big takes courage and only courageous founders can think big.
The Security to Start Small
The guiding philosophy to start small requires the entrepreneur to have inner security. With the internet as a leverage, it is now cheaper and faster to start and scale small side projects to profitability. Mailchimp is an example of how a side project got profitable and went on to become a full-fledged company. Fundamentally, it takes a quiet and rested disposition to begin on a small scale. While we think big, we must be willing to start small.
Books & People had begun as a side hustle. It was and still is independent and bootstrapped. Since founding, my colleagues and I have also been working remotely too – and this was before remote working was fashionable in and beyond the tech industry. Today, we are a profitable company. It is possible to be small and still thrive. Books & People is still small, and we plan to remain small. At the heart, it takes founders who are inwardly secured to start small.
The Wisdom to Build Deep
The belief to build deep is a call to work on the fundamentals. It is this philosophy that holds the tension between thinking big and starting small. It is understanding that depth and influence are more efficacious and scalable in the long run than breadth and impact. It is the wisdom of building to last, not building to sell. It is the Chinese entrepreneur’s belief of building a 100-year-old business and not the prevalent Silicon Valley’s practice of building to flip. Building deep is about having the wisdom to develop character. It is understanding that high integrity is very scalable. It is also understanding that high intelligence can yield high compound interest and is therefore worth developing through reading. Ultimately, building deep is knowing that founders need to take care of the depth of their life to scale the breadth of their works.
“Think Big. Start Small. Build Deep.”
This is a belief that takes courage, security and wisdom to pursue.
