The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible – and achieve it, generation after generation.
— Pearl S. Buck
Ask people what makes entrepreneurs successful and you’ll hear a familiar list of adjectives; agile, tenacious, resilient, opportunistic, etc.
What you don’t hear is that often they didn’t know any better.
I was just rereading Jessica Livingston’s book Founders at Work, and a common thread through the stories reminded me that there is a type of technology innovation that occurs in startups when a founder/team simply doesn’t know what they’re attempting is impossible.
Steve Wozniak at Apple building the Apple II floppy disk controller without ever seeing one. The original Fai...