The first habit, or the foundation, of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, is being proactive. In short, you are responsible for your own life, and therefore possess the initiative to make things happen.

I’m not through the entire book yet (I’m actually only on Habit 2), but this first habit applies to startups as much as life. If you own a startup, you are responsible for that startup’s success, and you must make things happen.

The following is a scenario I’ve seen before. You create a business you know customers will love, because you love it. Whether you spent money to create it or did it yourself is irrelevant. You go-live, but the people don’t come. You decide to post a link to your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Nothing. You add features because you thought of cool new stuff. Still nada. 

Here’s the point where many entrepreneurs make an incorrect critical decision. They either continue to add features, or they quit, assuming they’re product won’t be successful.

You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed. - Paul Graham

Paul Graham is really good at taking complex topics and breaking them down, such as the paragraph above. You only need three things to create a startup, but you can’t achieve any of them without being proactive. Startup life is difficult, and successful entrepreneurs can not let blame various circumstances for their results. They need to proactively find ways around those circumstances to achieve success.

Lean Startup principles are proactive by definition. You talk to customers to learn and validate assumptions until you achieve market fit. You’re continuously deploying changes, and testing small updates to understand their value. You remove waste that is not providing value to customers.

Being proactive sounds obvious, and I’m sure most feel they are already being proactive. However, looking at the definition of proactive from the book, I’m looking for ways to do better.

I can’t wait to read about the other 6 habits.