All Good Things Take Time. Keep Dancing.

A note to young leaders.

All good things take time.

Human pregnancy has a gestation period of 280 days. Dogs and cats, 9 weeks. Elephants, 15 months.

To each there is a season and a set time.

So too with startups. They have a gestation period of about 4-years. That’s how long it typically takes for a start-up to iterate its way to product-market fit, give or take a year.

Yet most entrepreneurs grow impatient and quit long before the four years are up.

Vic Johnson tells a story of a tribe in Africa that enjoyed a 100% success rate with its rain dance.

In comparing this tribe to other tribes, nothing stood out. They performed the same rituals, prayed the same incantations, performed the same dances. Like all the other tribes, they often danced for days, even weeks on end.

After a particularly severe drought, the villagers tracked down the legendary tribe. They sat at the feet of its chief and pleaded; “Oh Great Chief, we have danced and prayed, yet no rain has come. What’s your secret?”

“There is no secret”, explained the chief. “We just keep dancing until it rains.”

The rain always comes – sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.

But it always rains.

Dance until rains.