Not Every Opportunity Is Yours to Pick Up

Imagine walking down a street and seeing a string of $20 bills on the sidewalk, stretching as far as you can see. You’d be tempted to start scooping them up. But perhaps no one else has touched them because they’re spilling from a local gangster’s suitcase, and everyone knows he takes revenge on anyone who does.

Or imagine walking a beach and spotting strange foreign coins glittering in the sand. Tempting to grab, until you realize they’re heavy, precious, covered in unfamiliar script. You’d need secure storage, and it’ll cost you dearly just to learn what they’re worth and how to convert them.

Talented entrepreneurs have a knack for spotting currency on the ground that others walk past. The rarer skill is knowing which bills are worth the trouble. It’s not that they aren’t real money, it’s that they may not be yours to pick up.

Folks in complex enterprise sales understand this well. The difference between the statement of the bounty and what it takes to move the opportunity through the pipeline. Founders who’ve worked in healthcare know the gangster well. Crypto founders know all about the alien coins.

Some beat both games anyway, but they’re the exception, not the rule.

Boom times breed this temptation.

We saw it in the dot-com bust, group buying, the scooter wars, crypto, NFTs, and now AI too.

Don’t walk past real opportunities. Just be honest with yourself about whether it’s actually yours to pick up.

This parable was inspired by one of my mentors, André Perold.