Do you have Leverage?

Imagine setting up a water bottle shop in the middle of a desert. You're probably the one that's going to finish up all the water that you have. Although, drinking water in scorching heat serves a real purpose, without enough people needing what you have, your presence has no value there. In other words, your absence doesn't bother anyone too.

Now, let's take the same water bottle shop & set it up at the airport boarding gates. Now, you're paid a premium because of your presence in a place that restricts people between the airport walls. If they have to carry water & have no bottle, then spending a premium on your water bottle is the only option they got. I hope the point i'm trying to make is clear. All this falls under Leverage. Leverage has many forms & deeper understandings, but i as an Entrepreneur understood two.

1) Are you quenching someone's thirst when they really need it?
2) Are you available in a place that makes you exclusive?

Like i mentioned, there are many other ways to understand leverage, but these two somehow feel enough. For a few years now, i thought building a good product is the goal. It will probably do the job from that point onwards was my expectation. Once i got to that point & realized not everyone cares about what i built, i was lost for a long time questioning myself on what do i do next? Because, i had no guidance, i had no proven ways to pick a path. I did not have enough data to make an informed decision either. But through brute force of trying endlessly & having many conversations, i landed on the fact that my startup or me did not really have any leverage. That was the challenge lying ahead of me.

With that clarity, the goal now got updated. How do i build leverage was the only question in mind. I personally did not have a big following neither did my startup solve a dying problem. I understood what i needed to succeed, but still didn't know how to get it, especially being in the software world where AI was influencing a lot of minds with false expectations. Days were passing by, but i still wasn't building any leverage. Until i realized this one thing.....

To be continued tomorrow.

Thank you for reading.
Sai Mutyala
the cognitive founder