Disruption

I had a great weekend doing a whole lot of nothing. My Saturday was spent on the coach watching college football. A lot of my Sunday was the same watching NFL. It was a glorious lazy weekend. I wish a lot of my weekends in the fall could be that way, but Sophia may call off the wedding if I spent 20 hours a weekend watching football a weekend.

On another note - I wanted to write a bit about disruption. Most startups are launched with the goal in mind to disrupt an industry or service offering. Uber was launched to disrupt the taxi business. Airbnb was launched to disrupt the hotel and vacation rental industry. Moviepass was…. okay I’ll stop there.

Naturally, when you disrupt an industry, you’re likely going to piss off quite a few people in the process. Taxi drivers notoriously protested Uber coming to their cities. There was a lot of anti-Airbnb sentiment in cities from hotels and apartment building owners. People will always be resistant to change, especially those that make their livings in these industries.

This can be a tough feeling. On one hand, you want to be well-liked by everyone. It’s human nature. On another hand, you’re doing your job which is to disrupt the industry.

While I won’t make the claim that all disruption is a net positive for society or consumers, I do believe that advancement in technology and changes to stale industries are generally positive things. It forces everyone to raise the bar and consumers/businesses get better service.

Running a successful startup comes with the territory of generating hate. You can’t be liked by everyone so you’ll need to learn to embrace it.