You might’ve read this book - if you haven’t I’d recommend it. It’s a good audible listen, too.

The book is centered around a Stoic idea summed up well by Marcus Aurelius:

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

Every obstacle is an opportunity. Tear your achilles? Don’t feel sorry for yourself and sit on the couch eating caramel popcorn and watching One Day for hours (which may or may not have happened in Wilton, CT recently) - figure out how this is an opportunity. Achilles is shot for 4 months, but that means there’s an opportunity to build strength and flexibility from the ground up once it heals. And, in the mean-time, a chance to focus on breath work and other things I didn’t prioritize when I could just go for a run.

The approach is great for regular life but mandatory for startups.

When I worked at J&J in the internal venture group there was, obviously, a lot of attention spent on cancer. I remember chatting with my boss about what the best solutions were, and he’d always say “well short of early detection” for every startup we saw. The best possible approach was always early detection - early cancer detection has an 80% survival rate, compared to less than 20% for late-stage cancer.

But, the obstacle to getting early screening was massive. You needed an hour-long full-body MRI. And you needed it, ideally, yearly - at least for the highest risk groups. So it was ignored. By us as investors, and by startups. There’s no way people would actually get proactive screens, insurance would never pay for it because of how speculative it was - most people wouldn’t have cancer. If you asked people to pay out of pocket, it’d cost thousands. The obstacle was too big.

Well, the obstacle is the way. Ezra decided that the best cancer breakthrough we could ever invent was early detection. And yeah, MRIs were/are an obstacle. It’s hard to figure it all out, it’s expensive, but they’re navigating it. And the more the service grows and works, the more likely it’ll eventually be fully covered by insurance and become something everyone does every year. Once you decide the obstacle is the way, you can focus on navigating it.

Companies like Ezra inspire the hell out of me. Tackle the obstacle head on because the obstacle is the way.

What obstacle are you avoiding that could be the way?