Raise The Bar & Maintain Full Velocity, A Morning Reminder From Fred Destin at Accel Partners

We had breakfast with Fred this morning.

During our conversation, he reminded me something that sounds pretty obvious but that too many entrepreneurs and investors tend to forget along the way: You don’t reach the top by aiming for the moon. You reach the moon by aiming for the sun ! And don’t get me wrong here, this does not mean you must burn more cash to achieve more! This is a common & inaccurate association that people often make (comment from Oussama: One of the good way to raise the bar is to spend less to achieve more. Like when you decide to run more in same laps of time. That’s what produce muscles). It’s just a question of mindset that allows you to keep a high level of expectations and maintain full velocity.

If you set your goal to 100, your mind is clocked at 100. you will work on putting everything together to reach this goal and you will eventually succeed or not.

Now level up your goal to 200. What’s the purpose of this if you know you will never reach this objective? First, you don’t know that ;) Second, by raising the bar way higher than your prior objective, you’re unlocking your level of expectations and ambition. You’re freeing yourself from a prospective plan full of contingencies.

Do not clock your mind, because clocking is holding, holding is slowing down, slowing down is loosing velocity… You get it ! Maintain full velocity and make sure your team members do too.

It’s like this sweet reminder from Jeff Bezos about making decisions. Just don’t fall into the trap of as the company grows, the organisation slows down.

Keep it up fellows !