he sketched out his now-famous ballroom metaphor of the dance floor and the balcony. The idea is that when you’re down on the dance floor, your focus tends to be on your partner and on not colliding with other dancers spinning around you, which can often leave you with the impression that the ballroom is a crowded, chaotic environment to which you

“You know, for somebody who’s starting a venture, and particularly if you’ve got a product for which there isn’t precedent, the big challenge is obscurity—trying to get out of obscurity and get up on the radar.”

Chef and restaurateur José Andrés told me that ideas happen “when you are actively moving and searching.”

you can often start to build buzz before you’ve even launched your business, long before the world has a chance to make up its mind about you or your product.

Failing is scary. Wasting your life is dangerous.

Like asking friends and family for money, exposing your idea and all your hard work to feedback can be very uncomfortable, which can make the first phase of internal development feel like a safe space out of which you would rather not poke your head until you’re absolutely sure. Except “absolutely sure” doesn’t exist.

This is by far the most interesting aspect—and, I think, one of the most important characteristics—of so many of the pivot stories that I have heard from founders directly or that have become business school and Silicon Valley lore. Rarely, it seems, do companies pivot from failure to success. They don’t go from a bad idea to a good idea. Rather,

“I found it so motivating,” Eric Ryan told me, “because it’s one thing to lose our own money or fail, but when you’re taking money from people you really care about, you don’t want to let them down. It’s the best motivation to ensure that no matter how hard things get, you’re going to find a path forward.”

Jerry and Janie’s commitment to using the best ingredients produced the tastiest burgers and fries, which produced immediate fans in the people who had not experienced anything in the DC area like what Five Guys was offering. Yes, burgers and fries weren’t new, but this level of quality sure was.