Missional Startups: Default State Is Failure

Chris Dixon, founder of Hunch and SiteAdvisor, writes,

If you are starting a company and wondering why nothing good seems to happen unless you force it to happen, that’s because the world wants to stay the way it is. Customers, partners, and most of all incumbents don’t want to think hard, try new things, or change in any way. The world is lazy and just wants to keep doing what it’s doing. …

First-time entrepreneurs often fail to realize that when you build something new, no one will care. People won’t use your product, won’t tell people about it, and almost certainly won’t pay for it. (There are exceptions — but these are as rare as winning the lottery.) This doesn’t mean you’ll fail. It means you need to be smarter and harder working, and surround yourself with extraordinary people.

The default state of the world is to stay the way it is, which means the default state of a startup is failure.

What do you think? Is approaching a missional community like a tech startup helpful? Or not?