I’ve been inching—sometimes awkwardly—into a new venture, and the biggest thing I’ve learned is this: start small.
I remember watching this video in my college psychology class: a terrified kid was learning to use an elevator. The therapist slowly soothed him and kept saying everything was OK. As a computer-science major with a minor in psychology, I’ve always been fascinated by how we can blend humanity with tech.
Little did I know those lessons on exposure therapy would slide perfectly into entrepreneurship. I’ve been inching—sometimes awkwardly—into a new venture, and the biggest thing I’ve learned is this: start small.
My main hang-up was wanting to build something grand and complicated right out of the gate. When the vision is that huge, it feels impossible to start. Shrink the step until it’s almost silly. Before you hit a home run, you’ve got to swing the bat a thousand times. Before you build your masterpiece company, you build a tiny, scrappy one.
That slow build-up is exactly how exposure therapy works. To beat a phobia, you nudge the bar a little higher each time. In the elevator video, the kid first just pressed the button—for days—until that felt normal. Then he stood in the doorway with the doors propped open. Next he sat inside with the doors closed but the elevator still. Step by step, the fear dissolved.
Entrepreneurship is no different. Make the first slice of your project so small you can’t fail: ship one tiny feature, talk to a single potential customer, write one line of code—whatever your “press the button” moment is.
So, what huge idea has been camping out in your head for years? What’s the tiniest possible sliver you could tackle today? Go press that elevator button.