“Work smarter, not harder.” The former is tenacity, the latter is persistence.
At Conscience VC, we want founders with tenacity, *not* persistence.
But wait—aren’t these two essentially the same?!
Persistent founders and tenacious founders both have the determination to work until they succeed, but the methods they apply differ.
Persistence is doing something again and again until it works. It sounds like “pestering” for a reason—continuing to apply the same old, tired frameworks to a problem until a solution may or may not be forced through. This is iteration, to the point of a dead end, without change.
Tenacity begins with recognizing when old methods are not working to solve a problem.
The inflection point is when founders then also *adapt* by using new data to make fresh decisions and finding more efficient ways to achieve the original goal. It is progress through change.
This is best illustrated with an example.
Problem: A founder who is raising a new round is meeting with as many investors as possible. Immense amounts of energy, time, and effort are put into pitching around the clock. Yet, this founder still finds herself chasing after investors, with incredibly low commitment rates after initial meetings.
The persistent founder’s reaction: “I must not have met the right investor yet. I need to expand my pool of investors and keep pitching. Maybe some more introductions will work, and I’ll get lucky…”
The tenacious founder’s reaction: “Let’s take a step back and reevaluate. Which investors seem to be most aligned with my company’s vision? Let’s focus on them. How can I do my due diligence into these investors and refine my pitch so that it appeals best to these investors’ goals and my own?”
Outcome: Tenacious founder closes oversubscribed round early, and has a line of investors eager for the next round. Persistent founder is still chasing investors for their checks.
The tenacious founder was able to achieve her target, on a faster timeline with more meaningful relationships built, because she analyzed other methodologies and tried again under these new frameworks. The persistent founder finds herself, unsurprisingly, experiencing the same lackluster result with the same framework.
What are other common challenges where founders can apply tenacity over persistence?
