It’s a Friday in February in Maryland which means it’s High School Hockey Night. The Conference leading and defending state champion Churchill Bulldogs are playing the #2 Whitman Vikings. The two teams played 4 weeks earlier in a hotly contested, down-to-the-wire, game that ended with a late tie breaking goal for the Bulldogs. On that night the undefeated Bulldogs handed the formerly undefeated Vikings a 4 – 3 loss.
Tonight the Vikings are looking to avenge their only conference loss against their cross-town rivals. Think Apple versus Google. Think Ebay versus Amazon. Google versus Bing. Kanye versus Taylor Swift. Think 2 minutes left in the game and the score is tied 4 –4.
How to play this. There’s the conservative play, the Fortune 500 play, the hedge-your-bets,-load-the-ice-with-your-best-skating-defense-men-and-go-for-a-moral-victory play. Or you play it like an entrepreneur. Did Steve Jobs ever go for a tie? Did Zuckerburg set off to share market leadership with MySpace or did Facebook set out to vaporize their competitor?
Building something great is not going for the tie? Founding a startup is walking a wire without a net. It’s putting all your money on the next roll of the dice. It’s pulling out all the stops and going for the win at all costs. It’s going for broke. It’s saying screw the tie, we want the win.
With a little more than 2 minutes left in the game the Whitman coach gave his team a lesson in entrepreneurship. He pulled his goalie, leaving his net undefended while making room on the ice for another attack-man. With 20 seconds left, a Bulldog wing eludes a Viking defencemen, carefully aims and gently slides a puck into the empty goal.
Once again the Bulldogs have beaten the Vikings by a goal.
Was that better than the safe play? Was this loss better than a tie? My son, one of the 6 Viking skaters on the ice when the goal was scored, just witnessed a lesson in what it takes to be an entrepreneur. His coach’s damn the torpedo’s, full speed ahead attitude was an example in startup leadership for all the kids on the ice. There are losers and there are winners and having fewer goals on the scoreboard at the end of a game does not a loser make.
The founder of a company that tanks does not define a loser. No, not if the founder left nothing on the ice. Not if they played for the win. Not if you put it all out there. Not if you learned from this minor setback and take those lessons forward.
There’s nobility in playing all out. There’s lessons to be learned from the game. And if we decide we want to play for the tie, maybe we need to go work for the man. But if we want to start a company, we need to be ready to risk it all for the win.
…and if we don’t win this time, at least we played. And if we played and didn’t win, we haven’t lost if we just dust ourselves off, apply the lessons learned, and give it another go. It’s the same in High School Hockey as it is in starting a company. You have to keep playing to win….. to win.
Epilogue April 16 2012: On an early Thursday evening, the Whitman Vikings advance through the Maryland State Regional Playoffs to once again face the #1 seed Churchill Bulldogs. It is the third meeting of these 2 teams this season.
On this night the Vikings prevail and advance to the State Championship beating the Bulldogs in a tightly contested 2 – 1 hockey game. On this night the defending state champions exit the playoffs as the Vikings realize that playing to win pays off.
Epilogue of the Epilogue: The Vikings continued in the State Championship playoffs until an overtime loss in the semi-finals. While losing that game 3-2 they left the ice as champions.
