The art to flying is throwing yourself at the ground and missing
So pick a nice day, and start your own business!
Hey there 👋,
I’m Paul — co-founder and CEO of a UK based start-up.
Growing up, like most sensible people in the world, I never considered starting a company. However, after what appears to be a serendipitous series of events (I’ll confirm that they were indeed serendipitous once I find out how the story ends 😉), I founded an international company that has gone through the whole cycle of early-stage grafting through to VC-backed grafting.
This accidental journey has made it plainly obvious to me that the hype around start-ups is not just incredibly off putting but also largely false. To my younger self, an abundance of beautifully-crafted creation myths espousing suburban garages 🏚 made it seem unlikely that I was “a founder”. Or put another way — wouldn’t it be obvious if I was founder material?
“The art to flying” is a blog that aim’s to dispel these myths and show that creating a start-up is both sensible and achievable — for all of us👩🚀 . I truly believe that the more we can give people the confidence to start their own business, and solve the problems they care about, the better our world will become.
In this blog, I will share with you my own personal experiences of starting a business, and provide practical support to help you start & grow your company (like how you even “start” a company!). I will share insights about how I’m spending my time, and work through problems with you in real time. I won’t always have the answers, but I hope we can both learn something along the way 💡.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering where the blog’s name comes from? It’s a quote of Douglas Adams that perfectly captures my experience of starting a company.
There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy suggests, and try it.
The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it’s going to hurt.
That is, it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.
Clearly, it is the second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.
So go on — start that company. Yes, you’ll probably fall flat on your face, but if you’ve picked a nice day for it then there’s worse ways to spend your life. And once you stop thinking about the fact you’re trying to fly — well, you’ll be flying 🚀
