What are the qualities needed to launch your start-up?

Marc Jacobs. – “In my opinion, the qualities needed to launch any start-up is perseverance, willingness to learn from mistakes, willingness to continuously challenge your own ideas and perspectives, willingness to pivot any aspect of the business model and even the entire business model if need be, and most of all the ability to truly listen to your customer so you can correctly identify and solve their pain point.

Do you have any advice to give to those who are still hesitating to launch?

“Just do it. The thing you should be most concerned about is paralysis through analysis. Be decisive and move fast. I’m not suggesting that one shouldn’t think things through but it is inherent in a start-up environment that there are a lot of things that we don’t know, the so-called unknown unknowns (Donald Rumsfeld), so get on with it and adapt as you go.

We often hear that it is essential to make mistakes. What do you think about this?

“I would put that differently. It is essential to learn quickly from the things that didn’t work well and adapt or pivot. Dealing with unknown unknowns that didn’t work out well isn’t the same as making mistakes. In hindsight everything is always easier. If you reflect back on decisions you’ve made that didn’t work out, I would only call them mistakes if you clearly should have known better. If, however, you can imagine yourself back in time to the moment you made the decision and if, assuming the same limited information you had at the time, you would probably make the same decision again, I would not call that a mistake.”