6 ms·

The myth of the serial entrepreneur

156 points by xachen 14y ago

dataisfun 14y ago
This was extremely well written. A very nice change from typical meta-startup fare. Nicely done!
tomblomfield 14y ago
I can't help but feel that there's some sample bias going on here. Each example given is an person who is currently well-known for being an entrepreneur. By definition, they haven't moved on to something else. There's a tonne of people who've succeeded as an entrepreneur and then gone onto something else; venture capital (in fact most VCs partners are ex-entrepreneurs), politics or philanthropy, for example. The point is that these people are now known for something other than entrepreneurship, so they don't spring to mind as examples of one-time-entrepreneurs. /rant
- swombat 14y ago
  Can you name a handful? I don't argue that there are no such people, but I don't think there's a tonne of them.
  - technotony 14y ago
    Mitt Romney (who founded Bain capital), Bill Gates, Pierre Omidyar to name a few
    - swombat 14y ago
      Romney might be a rare exception - though it is debatable whether he ever ran a startup by the typical definition, since from inception, Bain Capital was pretty damn big. Bill Gates I've addressed in my article. If Bill Gates had been kicked out of MS in, say, 1985, he would most likely have done what Steve Jobs did, and started another business. As for Pierre Omidyar, he has started something called Civil Beat, an online news service, as well as Omidyar Network, which is an investment firm, which would put him halfway between the typical case and a Morten Lund case.
  - tomblomfield 14y ago
    Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Robin Klein, Bill Gates, Silvio Berlusconi, Michael Bloomberg, Niklas Zennström
    - swombat 14y ago
      Marc Andreessen: cofounded Netscape and then OpsWare and Ning and now is a VC. Serial to the max. Ben Horowitz: Opsware and then VC. A Morten Lund character. Bill Gates: already addressed in both the article and another comment Silvio Berlusconi: I don't know much about his business history, but a quick glance at his Wikipedia page shows he started multiple businesses. Definitely not a one-business-and-retire type. Michael Bloomberg: Ok, that one may be an example. Niklas Zennström: Skype, Kazaa, Joltid, Joost, and now a VC. Serial to the max.
      - amirmc 14y ago
        With people like Gates you could also argue that they create 'new' startups through their existing organisations. Why wouldn't you if you have a brand, distribution, etc that were hard-won? Also, Gates went on to set up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is arguably a different kind of startup.
      - teebs 14y ago
        Even Bloomberg is almost a serial entrepreneur. Effective, memorable politicians must be to some extent entrepreneurial--you have to believe in your own ability to create change and to unify people behind your cause.
  - prof_hobart 14y ago
    I know more than one person who's quit their day job, started up a business, made a few million pounds and then retired. They won't be anyone that you, or I suspect anyone else on here, knows. They are simply people I've worked with. And that's the thing. The ones that become mega-famous are typically the ones who have been around for an extended period of time - either through having spent the time building a single successful company (Bill Gates, Zuckerberg etc), or people who become well known for starting up multiple companies. If Bill Gates had retired 4 years after starting up Microsoft, how many people would even know his name now? Rather than trying to identify people who've famously walked away after a few years and comparing them to the number of famous people who didn't, a far better measure would be to find random 20 entrepreneurs who have only been doing it for a couple of years and see how many of them are still doing it, either with the same company, or with a new company, in 10 years time.
  - KingMob 14y ago
    The very fact that you don't know them could support the point. In science, this is known as survival bias. It's a mistake to argue that the entrepreneurs you read and hear about must be representative of all entrepreneurs. It's quite likely that the ones most likely to become serial entrepreneurs will remain visible, and the ones who stop after a successful exit are less likely to remain in the field.
    - lrobb 14y ago
      Quite right. There's a lot of people that just start one business and then stay with it for the rest of their working life. Then there's a lot of people that start something, decide that it's not for them, then go back to join a company. If your news only comes from techcrunch and venturebeat, you're missing out on these stories.
technotony 14y ago
Great quote to finish: "It means you should not burn relationships, piss off people, take damaging shortcuts - because you're in this small world of entrepreneurship for a long time to come. It means you should always act as if your behaviour as a founder will be with you for the rest of your career - because it will." so true. Thank you!!
- chegra 14y ago
  And even if you did[burn relationship, piss off people, take damaging shortcuts ], you will find the more intelligent people are apt to forgive. Making mistake in the past is no reason not to try again.
  - dsirijus 14y ago
    tit for tat with room for forgiveness
- kator 14y ago
  Funny I thought the same thing, I've been in business for almost 30 years now and I can still call people I worked with 25 years ago and they will work with me in an instant. The number of times I have looped back around and ran into the same people over and over is funny. Especially considering over time I have moved through many different industries. The golden rule applies to to entrepreneurs too. Karma is a bitch and worth paying attention to in life as in business.
slajax 14y ago
I enjoyed and agreed with most of this. I've never understood the term "serial entrepreneur" beyond the idea that it solidifies the fact that a certain individual has sold ( if that should be their goal - not mine ) more then one company. Ultimately all entrepreneurs come from the same cloth of success driven business (value) invention. Some want to follow the hollywood IPO story. Some want to bootstrap. It's all a matter of preference beyond those details and to some it's not about being defined as a "serial entrepreneur". Personally I wouldn't sell my company just to start another until I met my professional goals.
adamt 14y ago
I agree with a lot of what the author says, but I am not sure I agree with the main premise in his title. Luck and timing often play a big role in setting up a business. I think there are some people who saw an opportunity through being in the right place at the right time and created a business out of it. Often these evolve into being what people call lifestyle businesses. In my mind these people don't fit into the 'compress 40 years of work into 4 years' camp and are non-serial entrepreneurs. To me, the mark of a serial entrepreneur is someone who has started a business up, got it to the point where it's been successful, and then having had the option of staying on very comfortably with either a lifestyle business, working in a bigger company, or early-retirement has decided that they want the buzz and excitement of a startup again. A good serial entrepreneur is by extension of that someone who can do this more than once successfully. To create a single business that works out can often involve a lot of luck/timing; to do it 3 or 4 times is something else.
- swombat 14y ago
  That's an interesting angle, though I would argue that what you're defining here is a very successful serial entrepreneur, rather just a "serial entrepreneur". I'd say that someone who willingly jumps into startup after startup is a serial entrepreneur - successful or not. Max Levchin was clearly a serial entrepreneur already after his 6th company, even though he hadn't started Skype and Slide yet...
  - loceng 14y ago
    We could look at through a different lens and state that if you aren't jumping into startup after startup - successful or not - are you even an entrepreneur?
    - swombat 14y ago
      Well, that's sort of my point... serial entrepreneurs are the norm. Perhaps we should come up with a term for those rare entrepreneurs who are satisfied with a single attempt at the business game...
kator 14y ago
Really good article, at first I started reading on the defensive because I am a serial entrepreneur. For 28 years of my life I never had a payroll check from anyone but my own companies. It was amazing and painful at the same time. I thought about starting my sixth company and I got a chance to be an SVP at a very large public company. I did that for a while and really enjoyed it and actually moved on to a new company now were I'm an executive and get to do a lot of cool stuff. I often debate on going back to start company six, and many saturdays my circle of friends hold "startup circle" where we pitch ideas and push a couple small projects forward and debate on quitting our real jobs and going back to building another company. I would say the best realization of this article is that entrepreneur is a state of mind. A willingness to create from nothing in the face of extreem adversity. I have been a developer for close to 30 years now also and it's very much like that first couple of hours when you stare at the blank screen thinking about the 100,000's of lines of code needed to build whatever system it is you're about to build. Except it's more addicting then that because the scale is so much larger and your "vision" collides with "reality" and becomes something you can influence but often you end up along for the ride. I personally would bet it's the same reason professional bull rider's ride bulls. Most of us look at them like they're insane but they have this zen approach to managing risk and the randomness of the bull trying to kill them. And when they beat the other guy the "high" must be quite insane. Entrepreneurs suffer from the same sort of bold blindness. I have spoken with many people over the years who ask me "how can you do that, how do you get out of bed every day and just push forward" and I tell them I just like the challenge. To them they see me risking my family, my house, my car and my career to do something that scares them to death. To me I see the opportunity to express something that burns in the core of my soul and make something from nothing on a scale that should scare me but really just excites me! I think the saying "40 years of work in 4 years" is a bit unfair, the reality is if you love what you do and are passionate about it you can work like this in a company that already exists or a mid-term C round start-up and have a lot of fun and potentially be well rewarded. That part is just the workaholic that might give an entrepreneur slight edge and a chance to ride the bull just a bit longer then the next guy.
- bedris 14y ago
  I would say the best realization of this article is that entrepreneur is a state of mind. A willingness to create from nothing in the face of extreem adversity. I agree with this. I came across the following definition of an entrepreneur, which I also really liked: "[the] definition of an entrepreneur is someone who makes things happen despite not controlling the resources necessary to achieve them." Source: http://www.tcpinnovations.com/drugbaron/?p=242 http://www.tcpinnovations.com/drugbaron/?p=242
srbufi 14y ago
Isn't a serial entrepreneur any entrepreneur that hasn't created a company as large as Google or Apple or Microsoft? In tech, it's possible to iterate indefinitely until reaching such size that it no longer requires a completely new company to be motivated to go on.
mik4el 14y ago
Another perspective; can you call yourself a true entrepreneur if you haven't had more than one entrepreneurial endevaour (I'm not talking that you need to have IPOd a tech company before but rather had a lemonade stand as a kid and vice versa)?
- mindcrime 14y ago
  When I read a question that gets into what or is not a "true entrepreneur" all I can think of is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman which suggests to me that debating over labels like "true entrepreneur" (or not) or "serial entrepreneur" (or not) is a waste of time. The same discussion also smacks of a sort of elitism that I associate with the idiots to run around talking about what metal bands are or aren't "tr00 kvlt". None of this strikes me as very productive.
  - temp1337 14y ago
    Your link to Wikipedia further fuels my occasional trolls there. I know enough about enough things to introduce sophisticated errors beyond the "bill fucks jane" type trolls you'll see in article histories. Self-reflection is obviously a very difficult thing for our species, and perhaps you should reflect that you aren't being very productive making this comment. Hug your cat.
  - temp1337 14y ago
    Wow--the truth hurts. I don't have any down-votes, but no comments or up-votes here. Well, it's not about me. It's about the lives that Peter Thiel can ruin by taking people out of school. Being a billionaire removes the kind of people who will warn you about this. Not a flame--just an observation. Meanwhile, I think I'll go hug my spouse and dog. If there's a lesson here--speak truth to money. Speak truth to power. I'm not going to fix our species--but I'm not going to whine to a bartender or worship a zombie either. Good luck--everyone.
cottonseed 14y ago
I'd probably be described as a "normal" entrepreneur. I worked on five startups, the last of which had a reasonably successful exit. I haven't started another company since. A company isn't the only "laboratory of ideas", and money let me explore some other options. I'm in a PhD program in mathematics now. I didn't avoid starting a company because it is hard work. I agree, starting a company had an addictive intensity that is hard to find elsewhere. Will I start another company some day? Maybe. Would I ever have a "normal" job again? No way.
moron 14y ago
I'm trying to go the other way. I'm trying to decompress 20 years of work into 40. I'm not much of one for schleps, I guess.
ragincajun 14y ago
Great article. It's hard enough to choose one idea from all of the great ideas "I think" I have. If I'm successful on my first venture, there is no doubt I'll try again with something new.
temp1337 14y ago
Could someone convince me that Hacker News is not "serial navel-gazing". No, I didn't read the article. Do you people work? Not everyone can be a billionaire, and you can't eat ego (or butthurt). I'm really open to coming here--maybe not posting, but looking for interesting things to read. There is only so much time in the day--I can always hug my dog. My dog doesn't care about ego (or butthurt).
bfe 14y ago
Great essay, though I don't think it's precise in how it characterizes pg's status as a serial entrepreneur. There's no doubt YC is a second startup, but it's still sort of a unique case or meta-startup that serves pg's prior stated interest, as quoted in the essay, in not fully facing the risks and schleps of a normal startup. I believe I remember pg writing somewhere that he didn't want to repeat the giant risk of a normal startup, and he saw YC as a way of taking a diversified portfolio approach to startup involvement, of smoothing out the risk (and schleps) of a startup. So, I don't think the essay is precise in simply characterizing pg as saying he shied away from doing another startup until he changed his mind and did one anyway. Instead, he came up with a kind of startup that he could get into that didn't require changing his mind about his approach. (At least, that's how I understood it.)

156 points by xachen 14y ago

This was extremely well written. A very nice change from typical meta-startup fare. Nicely done!

I can't help but feel that there's some sample bias going on here. Each example given is an person who is currently well-known for being an entrepreneur. By definition, they haven't moved on to something else. There's a tonne of people who've succeeded as an entrepreneur and then gone onto something else; venture capital (in fact most VCs partners are ex-entrepreneurs), politics or philanthropy, for example. The point is that these people are now known for something other than entrepreneurship, so they don't spring to mind as examples of one-time-entrepreneurs. /rant

swombat 14y ago
Can you name a handful? I don't argue that there are no such people, but I don't think there's a tonne of them.
- technotony 14y ago
  Mitt Romney (who founded Bain capital), Bill Gates, Pierre Omidyar to name a few
  - swombat 14y ago
    Romney might be a rare exception - though it is debatable whether he ever ran a startup by the typical definition, since from inception, Bain Capital was pretty damn big. Bill Gates I've addressed in my article. If Bill Gates had been kicked out of MS in, say, 1985, he would most likely have done what Steve Jobs did, and started another business. As for Pierre Omidyar, he has started something called Civil Beat, an online news service, as well as Omidyar Network, which is an investment firm, which would put him halfway between the typical case and a Morten Lund case.
- tomblomfield 14y ago
  Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Robin Klein, Bill Gates, Silvio Berlusconi, Michael Bloomberg, Niklas Zennström
  - swombat 14y ago
    Marc Andreessen: cofounded Netscape and then OpsWare and Ning and now is a VC. Serial to the max. Ben Horowitz: Opsware and then VC. A Morten Lund character. Bill Gates: already addressed in both the article and another comment Silvio Berlusconi: I don't know much about his business history, but a quick glance at his Wikipedia page shows he started multiple businesses. Definitely not a one-business-and-retire type. Michael Bloomberg: Ok, that one may be an example. Niklas Zennström: Skype, Kazaa, Joltid, Joost, and now a VC. Serial to the max.
    - amirmc 14y ago
      With people like Gates you could also argue that they create 'new' startups through their existing organisations. Why wouldn't you if you have a brand, distribution, etc that were hard-won? Also, Gates went on to set up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is arguably a different kind of startup.
    - teebs 14y ago
      Even Bloomberg is almost a serial entrepreneur. Effective, memorable politicians must be to some extent entrepreneurial--you have to believe in your own ability to create change and to unify people behind your cause.
- prof_hobart 14y ago
  I know more than one person who's quit their day job, started up a business, made a few million pounds and then retired. They won't be anyone that you, or I suspect anyone else on here, knows. They are simply people I've worked with. And that's the thing. The ones that become mega-famous are typically the ones who have been around for an extended period of time - either through having spent the time building a single successful company (Bill Gates, Zuckerberg etc), or people who become well known for starting up multiple companies. If Bill Gates had retired 4 years after starting up Microsoft, how many people would even know his name now? Rather than trying to identify people who've famously walked away after a few years and comparing them to the number of famous people who didn't, a far better measure would be to find random 20 entrepreneurs who have only been doing it for a couple of years and see how many of them are still doing it, either with the same company, or with a new company, in 10 years time.
- KingMob 14y ago
  The very fact that you don't know them could support the point. In science, this is known as survival bias. It's a mistake to argue that the entrepreneurs you read and hear about must be representative of all entrepreneurs. It's quite likely that the ones most likely to become serial entrepreneurs will remain visible, and the ones who stop after a successful exit are less likely to remain in the field.
  - lrobb 14y ago
    Quite right. There's a lot of people that just start one business and then stay with it for the rest of their working life. Then there's a lot of people that start something, decide that it's not for them, then go back to join a company. If your news only comes from techcrunch and venturebeat, you're missing out on these stories.

technotony 14y ago

Great quote to finish: "It means you should not burn relationships, piss off people, take damaging shortcuts - because you're in this small world of entrepreneurship for a long time to come. It means you should always act as if your behaviour as a founder will be with you for the rest of your career - because it will." so true. Thank you!!

chegra 14y ago
And even if you did[burn relationship, piss off people, take damaging shortcuts ], you will find the more intelligent people are apt to forgive. Making mistake in the past is no reason not to try again.
- dsirijus 14y ago
  tit for tat with room for forgiveness
kator 14y ago
Funny I thought the same thing, I've been in business for almost 30 years now and I can still call people I worked with 25 years ago and they will work with me in an instant. The number of times I have looped back around and ran into the same people over and over is funny. Especially considering over time I have moved through many different industries. The golden rule applies to to entrepreneurs too. Karma is a bitch and worth paying attention to in life as in business.

slajax 14y ago

I enjoyed and agreed with most of this. I've never understood the term "serial entrepreneur" beyond the idea that it solidifies the fact that a certain individual has sold ( if that should be their goal - not mine ) more then one company. Ultimately all entrepreneurs come from the same cloth of success driven business (value) invention. Some want to follow the hollywood IPO story. Some want to bootstrap. It's all a matter of preference beyond those details and to some it's not about being defined as a "serial entrepreneur". Personally I wouldn't sell my company just to start another until I met my professional goals.

adamt 14y ago

I agree with a lot of what the author says, but I am not sure I agree with the main premise in his title. Luck and timing often play a big role in setting up a business. I think there are some people who saw an opportunity through being in the right place at the right time and created a business out of it. Often these evolve into being what people call lifestyle businesses. In my mind these people don't fit into the 'compress 40 years of work into 4 years' camp and are non-serial entrepreneurs. To me, the mark of a serial entrepreneur is someone who has started a business up, got it to the point where it's been successful, and then having had the option of staying on very comfortably with either a lifestyle business, working in a bigger company, or early-retirement has decided that they want the buzz and excitement of a startup again. A good serial entrepreneur is by extension of that someone who can do this more than once successfully. To create a single business that works out can often involve a lot of luck/timing; to do it 3 or 4 times is something else.

swombat 14y ago
That's an interesting angle, though I would argue that what you're defining here is a very successful serial entrepreneur, rather just a "serial entrepreneur". I'd say that someone who willingly jumps into startup after startup is a serial entrepreneur - successful or not. Max Levchin was clearly a serial entrepreneur already after his 6th company, even though he hadn't started Skype and Slide yet...
- loceng 14y ago
  We could look at through a different lens and state that if you aren't jumping into startup after startup - successful or not - are you even an entrepreneur?
  - swombat 14y ago
    Well, that's sort of my point... serial entrepreneurs are the norm. Perhaps we should come up with a term for those rare entrepreneurs who are satisfied with a single attempt at the business game...

kator 14y ago

Really good article, at first I started reading on the defensive because I am a serial entrepreneur. For 28 years of my life I never had a payroll check from anyone but my own companies. It was amazing and painful at the same time. I thought about starting my sixth company and I got a chance to be an SVP at a very large public company. I did that for a while and really enjoyed it and actually moved on to a new company now were I'm an executive and get to do a lot of cool stuff. I often debate on going back to start company six, and many saturdays my circle of friends hold "startup circle" where we pitch ideas and push a couple small projects forward and debate on quitting our real jobs and going back to building another company. I would say the best realization of this article is that entrepreneur is a state of mind. A willingness to create from nothing in the face of extreem adversity. I have been a developer for close to 30 years now also and it's very much like that first couple of hours when you stare at the blank screen thinking about the 100,000's of lines of code needed to build whatever system it is you're about to build. Except it's more addicting then that because the scale is so much larger and your "vision" collides with "reality" and becomes something you can influence but often you end up along for the ride. I personally would bet it's the same reason professional bull rider's ride bulls. Most of us look at them like they're insane but they have this zen approach to managing risk and the randomness of the bull trying to kill them. And when they beat the other guy the "high" must be quite insane. Entrepreneurs suffer from the same sort of bold blindness. I have spoken with many people over the years who ask me "how can you do that, how do you get out of bed every day and just push forward" and I tell them I just like the challenge. To them they see me risking my family, my house, my car and my career to do something that scares them to death. To me I see the opportunity to express something that burns in the core of my soul and make something from nothing on a scale that should scare me but really just excites me! I think the saying "40 years of work in 4 years" is a bit unfair, the reality is if you love what you do and are passionate about it you can work like this in a company that already exists or a mid-term C round start-up and have a lot of fun and potentially be well rewarded. That part is just the workaholic that might give an entrepreneur slight edge and a chance to ride the bull just a bit longer then the next guy.

bedris 14y ago
I would say the best realization of this article is that entrepreneur is a state of mind. A willingness to create from nothing in the face of extreem adversity. I agree with this. I came across the following definition of an entrepreneur, which I also really liked: "[the] definition of an entrepreneur is someone who makes things happen despite not controlling the resources necessary to achieve them." Source: http://www.tcpinnovations.com/drugbaron/?p=242 http://www.tcpinnovations.com/drugbaron/?p=242

srbufi 14y ago

Isn't a serial entrepreneur any entrepreneur that hasn't created a company as large as Google or Apple or Microsoft? In tech, it's possible to iterate indefinitely until reaching such size that it no longer requires a completely new company to be motivated to go on.

mik4el 14y ago

Another perspective; can you call yourself a true entrepreneur if you haven't had more than one entrepreneurial endevaour (I'm not talking that you need to have IPOd a tech company before but rather had a lemonade stand as a kid and vice versa)?

mindcrime 14y ago
When I read a question that gets into what or is not a "true entrepreneur" all I can think of is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman which suggests to me that debating over labels like "true entrepreneur" (or not) or "serial entrepreneur" (or not) is a waste of time. The same discussion also smacks of a sort of elitism that I associate with the idiots to run around talking about what metal bands are or aren't "tr00 kvlt". None of this strikes me as very productive.
- temp1337 14y ago
  Your link to Wikipedia further fuels my occasional trolls there. I know enough about enough things to introduce sophisticated errors beyond the "bill fucks jane" type trolls you'll see in article histories. Self-reflection is obviously a very difficult thing for our species, and perhaps you should reflect that you aren't being very productive making this comment. Hug your cat.
- temp1337 14y ago
  Wow--the truth hurts. I don't have any down-votes, but no comments or up-votes here. Well, it's not about me. It's about the lives that Peter Thiel can ruin by taking people out of school. Being a billionaire removes the kind of people who will warn you about this. Not a flame--just an observation. Meanwhile, I think I'll go hug my spouse and dog. If there's a lesson here--speak truth to money. Speak truth to power. I'm not going to fix our species--but I'm not going to whine to a bartender or worship a zombie either. Good luck--everyone.

cottonseed 14y ago

I'd probably be described as a "normal" entrepreneur. I worked on five startups, the last of which had a reasonably successful exit. I haven't started another company since. A company isn't the only "laboratory of ideas", and money let me explore some other options. I'm in a PhD program in mathematics now. I didn't avoid starting a company because it is hard work. I agree, starting a company had an addictive intensity that is hard to find elsewhere. Will I start another company some day? Maybe. Would I ever have a "normal" job again? No way.

moron 14y ago

I'm trying to go the other way. I'm trying to decompress 20 years of work into 40. I'm not much of one for schleps, I guess.

ragincajun 14y ago

Great article. It's hard enough to choose one idea from all of the great ideas "I think" I have. If I'm successful on my first venture, there is no doubt I'll try again with something new.

temp1337 14y ago

Could someone convince me that Hacker News is not "serial navel-gazing". No, I didn't read the article. Do you people work? Not everyone can be a billionaire, and you can't eat ego (or butthurt). I'm really open to coming here--maybe not posting, but looking for interesting things to read. There is only so much time in the day--I can always hug my dog. My dog doesn't care about ego (or butthurt).

bfe 14y ago

Great essay, though I don't think it's precise in how it characterizes pg's status as a serial entrepreneur. There's no doubt YC is a second startup, but it's still sort of a unique case or meta-startup that serves pg's prior stated interest, as quoted in the essay, in not fully facing the risks and schleps of a normal startup. I believe I remember pg writing somewhere that he didn't want to repeat the giant risk of a normal startup, and he saw YC as a way of taking a diversified portfolio approach to startup involvement, of smoothing out the risk (and schleps) of a startup. So, I don't think the essay is precise in simply characterizing pg as saying he shied away from doing another startup until he changed his mind and did one anyway. Instead, he came up with a kind of startup that he could get into that didn't require changing his mind about his approach. (At least, that's how I understood it.)