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I’ve been thinking about this post for a while.  Basically since the great NYT Piece came out on Shane Battier. I think Shane’s story is a remarkable one, and there are a lot of lessons that can be applied to startups and to careers in general.  It’s also interesting to juxtapose his experience with a lesser known Blue Devil - Chris Burgess.

Shane Battier and Chris Burgess were both in my class at Duke.  Both were very highly touted new recruits on an amazing freshman class that also included Elton Brand. Both were McDonald’s High School All Americans.  But they had very different careers in college:

Battier: (Year: PPG/RPG)

1998: 7.6/6.4, 1999: 9.1/4.9, 2000: 17.4/5.6, 2001: 19.9/7.3, 2002: NBA

Burgess: (Year: PPG/RPG)

1998: 4.3/3.4, 1999: 5.4/3.9, 2000: Transferred, 2001: 7.8/5.9, 2002: 13.2/7.2

Today, Shane is with the Houston Rockets and one of the most well regarded role players in the NBA.  Chris has bounced around the European league and is currently playing with a team in Dubai.

I think there are a couple generalizable lessons from these two careers.

1. Find product/market fit early, and be realistic when it isn’t there.

In this case, the player is the product and the team and the NCAA broadly is the market.  Unfortunately Burgess didn’t fit into the Duke system.  It was painfully obvious fairly early on.  Coach K typically has one dominant big man, and a bunch of wing players who shoot threes.  Brand emerged early as that dominant center, and Burgess was left without a role.  Unfortunately, he had to battle through it for two years before he transferred, and unfortunately, he also battled a string of injuries once he started playing for Utah.

Startup entrepreneurs search for product market fit from the very beginning.  I think the challenge in the early stages of a company is to find that fit as quickly and as painlessly as possible.  Until you get there, you want to avoid spending a lot of money on a team, marketing, or infrastructure.  The problem comes when a founder is too attached to his product concept, that he keeps plowing forward even when users are only lukewarm about the product.

Sean Ellis has a very simple way to measure whether PMF is achieved.  The basic idea is to get to a point where 40% of users say they would be very dissappointed if they could no longer use your product.  I think this is something all early stage companies should be measuring and trying to achieve.

In Burgess’ case, he did not achieve PM fit at Duke.  Unlike a web startup, basketball players can’t experiment anywhere near as nimbly with their product. So he had to make the painful decision to leave after two years, redshirt for one year, before continuing his career in Utah.

2. Do A Few Things So Well It Becomes a Thing of Beauty

Shane Battier fit well within the Duke system.  He was very versatile and was a great defender and rebounder.  But he started at Duke as an all-around smart player.  I think it was pretty clear early on that he wouldn’t be a dominant superstar.

What Shane did do was focus on a few things that he did very well, and perfected them.  Specifically, he became the best defender in the NCAA.  He also made an art out of taking charges (a stat that most people don’t pay any attention to). When players faced Shane 1-on-1 when driving the basket, you could actually see fear in their eyes as he got into position to take a charge.

It’s also interesting to see what Shane didn’t become.  He didn’t handle the ball very much, and actually looked quite awkward doing so.  His rebounding numbers didn’t go through the roof, and he didn’t really create scoring opportunities for himself.

A lot of startups have big aspirations of how the product will evolve.  Entrepreneurs are excited about solving huge problems and there are a lot of them out there to tackle.  But most game changing companies start out doing one thing extremely well.  In fact, they do that one thing so well that they uncover unique opportunities that weren’t obvious before.  As an early stage company, it’s important to figure out what it is you will do far better than anyone else.  The most dangerous startups are probably the one that do everything ok, because it’s not immediately obvious that things aren’t going to work out.

3. Know Where You Hope to Get To and What You Need to Get There

Great startups can’t be single product companies that do only one thing well forever.  They eventually have to mature and become real, meaningful businesses. In the same way, great college basketball players often struggle to make the leap into the NBA because their areas of strength are insufficient in a much more competitive league.

I don’t know how intentional this was, but Battier seemed to have a plan for what an NBA version of him would look like, and evolved him game to fit that vision.  During his junior year, he added a three point shot that made him a viable offensive threat.  In the NBA, he improved his quickness and evolved his defensive abilities to be able to handle quicker guards and forwards as opposed to the post players he had defended during most of his college career. His evolution was amazing to watch.  It seemed almost perfectly calculated, fit his god given talents, and matched the needs of the NBA perfectly.

Often, I meet with entrepreneurs who don’t have a great core product that I think could achieve PMF.  But even the ones that do need to have a clear idea of where they are going and the steps necessary to achieve those goals.  Things obviously change over time, but it’s comforting for an investor to know that the entrepreneur has a reasonable roadmap to becoming a big successful company.  Good entrepreneurs know this is more than just imprecise jargon.  It usually involves deep appreciation for the market they compete in, intimate understanding of competitors, and knowledge of the 2 or 3 things that need to go right for their company to win big.

Shane and Chris are both pretty young guys so it’s still early in their careers.  I was a huge Burgess fan, and do hope that he can make it into the NBA one day and have a few solid seasons.  For Battier, it will be interesting to see if he is able to squeeze out even more output from his talents and become a real All-Star.  I wouldn’t bet against him – he’s done a phenomenal job so far.