Should you be a pioneer? The answer may surprise you!

Have you tried to start a startup before?

I have; and regardless of the outcome, whenever I was trying to start one with a partner, I always got the response “but there are others who do the same!”, at least once in the conversation.

It usually sounds like this:

You want to start a translation service? There are thousands of them out there.

You want to start a training center? There are so many in the city where I live.

You want to start a consulting company? There are plenty of those too.

You always get the impression that you should do something that no one has ever done before, at least not in the community where you’re staying.

But is it true? Do you have to be a ‘pioneer’ to succeed?

What is a pioneer?

In the business world, a pioneer is understood as someone who is the first to develop and implement a new idea or approach in the business world. They are the ones who take risks and innovate, leading the way for others to follow.

Pioneers are often the forefront of innovation, developing new technologies, business models, or practices that can have a significant impact on their industry.

You look at electric cars, you have to give credit to Elon Musk for Tesla. You look at computers, and you remember Apple’s pioneering in the field. Zuckerburg’s Facebook, Henry Ford’s automobiles… etc.

All these people succeeded in their industries, and they were considered pioneers. Or were they?

Hold on. Tesla was definitely not the first electric car. There were many cars built over the previous +100 years.

Apple was one of the earliest to develop and manufacture a personal computer, but they also weren’t the first. The first one was Altair 8800 which had been invented a year before.

And don’t even get me started on Facebook. LiveJournal, MySpace, and LinkedIn all came years before it.

So how are they defined as pioneers?
Let’s re-define pioneering then:  A pioneer is often the first one to succeed in bringing a new idea to the mainstream market, making it widely available and accepted. They are the ones who take the risk and overcome the challenges to achieve success and pave the way for others to follow – the ones who succeed in popularizing and advancing it and making it widely accepted by the public.

So is pioneering even an advantage? Should you be a pioneer?

Short answer is: No.

Long answer is: If you’re starting a business, then you’re probably aiming to make money.

Looking at the pioneers above, you’ll find two situations:

1. In the sense of being the very first person who invents or introduces something new, pioneers fail more often than not. The perceived pioneers are usually those who took the technology, developed it further, built on it, and then succeeded.
2. If you’re taking the second sense of pioneering, i.e. those who did not necessarily invent the technology but rather improved it and turned it into a successful business, then they are still the very few people you heard about. It’s like saying “I want to be a soccer/football player because Messi, Ronaldo and Mbappe make millions of dollars.” While in reality, this is just a biased opinion based on the sample you’re looking at. You’re just looking at those who managed to succeed and totally forgot the millions of others who didn’t.

Hold on, that’s not meant to hold you back from investing in your new idea. Read on.

Inventions and new technologies are among the basic elements in the development of humanity and civilizations.

But let’s face it – pioneering is usually not the best way to make money. Pioneers often fail because of one or more of the following factors:

1. Timing: The timing of the invention may not be right for the market. Even if the technology is sound, it may not be ready for commercialization or may not be well-suited for the current market conditions.
2. Resources: The inventor may not have the resources or the ability to bring the technology to market. They may lack the funding, expertise, or infrastructure needed to develop and commercialize the technology.
3. Execution: The inventor may not have the skills or experience to execute the development, production, and marketing of the technology properly.
4. Market acceptance: The technology may not be well-accepted by the market, for various reasons, like lack of understanding, lack of need, or lack of trust.

After that, they often pave the way for those who will make the idea successful, but they’ll simply be the scapegoat.

Innovation and pioneering are noble things to do for your society, your industry, and perhaps the whole world, or simply for passion.

But there’s still a chance that a pioneer can succeed! And there are examples. You just need to start by realizing that ‘inventing and creativity’ are different from ‘a successful business’.

Succeeding in business has a multitude of other factors, many of which are more important than the idea or the invention itself.

Among these factors, a key one is having to secure sufficient financing for the long term until the idea is accepted by the society. Usually any idea that entails changing market perception takes a lot of time.

Perseverance, then, shows itself as one of the most important factors in the success of such a business. Unlike trending businesses, introducing a new idea means you may face a lot of rejection and failure until people start accepting the concepts you’re providing.

Doing proper market research and analyzing why similar projects failed in the past is one of those as well.

Innovation and pioneering are noble things to do for your society, your industry, and perhaps the whole world, or simply for passion.

That said, for the vast majority of entrepreneurs, it’s simply easier to take an existing, or better yet trending, idea, find a gap between supply and demand, maybe develop a niche in it, have a proper business plan, and then conquer the business world.

To sum it up…

It’s always nice to be perceived as a pioneer. However, if you want to be a pioneer, do it for passion or to help others. Otheriwse, if you’re merely trying to be a pioneer to start a successful business, then it’s usually not an advantage. More often than not, businesses that follow new or existing demand trends have a better chance to succeed.