I first heard this phrase a few months ago in relation to Facebook and their approach to development. It’s stayed with me ever since and I think the reason for that is that the phrase really struck a chord with me and is definitely something that I can learn from.

When you think about it, nothing really exists or means anything until it is completed.   When I relate this to myself it makes me uncomfortable.

I have this unhealthy desire for perfection in what I do. In this pursuit there are four outcomes when I approach a piece of work or a task as follows:

1. Non-starter – I’ll agonize over how I will ever get any where near perfection and therefore never start.

2. The long tail – I’ll spend far too much time in the final stages of something, in striving for perfection, to the point where either the moment or the deadline has passed or there are diminishing returns.

3. What if – I’ll complete something that is less than perfect and then angst over how it could have been improved with more time.

4. Perfection – very occasionally I’ll bask in the glory of believing that what I have done is pretty much perfect!

No. 3 is manageable but all the others are not great.

With all this in mind, the ‘done is better than perfect’ mantra helps me and I am trying to put it into practice.  Obviously there is a quality standard that we want to be striving for in almost everything we do but it is not realistic or healthy for that to be perfect.

Generally the pursuit of perfection holds us back and makes us less productive.  I think that the main priority has to be completing something with the time and resources that we have available. If you then think it’s not good enough, with the benefit of time and the feedback you receive, you can either go back and improve it or decide that it’s not for you and move onto to something else.

In the spirit of this post I have been writing for precisely 26 minutes and am now going to consider this completed!

There was an interesting piece in the Economist this week about how European’s economic challenges are related to the region’s failure to develop an environment that supports and encourages entrepreneurs. A quote that really caught my eye was:

“Europe’s culture is deeply inhospitable to entrepreneurs; wanting to grow a start-up into a behemoth is quite as countercultural as piercings and performance art.”

Everyone knows that small growing companies are a key driver of any successful economy. At the same time, I think most people would agree that Europe has not created an environment that allows entrepreneurs to flourish. There are numerous theories for why this is and what could be done differently.

As an investor in European entrepreneurs I think about this subject a great deal – indeed I wrote a post about it few months ago.

But what really struck me about the Economist’s piece was the way they put the subject in a historical perspective. This graph is taken from the piece and shows when the world’s largest companies were founded, comparing Europe with the US. You can see that, up until the end of the 19^th century, Europe created far more of the world’s largest companies than the US. From 1876-1900 nearly 10% of the world’s largest companies were founded in Europe.

From 1900 onwards the US is increasingly in the ascendancy with the most recent period form 1976-2007 showing Europe creating only 3 of the global 500 as compared to 25 in the US.

This is a fairly depressing trend and definitely supports the view that Europe is not a great place for entrepreneurs or for turning small companies into world-beaters.

While the US has become more and more dynamic as an economy, and led the way across a number of industries, with technology perhaps being the most important, Europe has gone backwards. There are various reasons for this that include growing fragmentation, a cultural reluctance to change or take risks and an increasing move towards socialism.

But the more interesting question is whether Europe can reverse the tide? I think there are a few encouraging signs as follows:

• The awful state of the economy is forcing people to rethink their once safe career choices and consider alternatives
• In the tech industry people and resources are starting to coalesce more and more around central hubs, with the main ones being London and Berlin
• Governments across the region are recognizing the need to support and encourage entrepreneurs leading to a wide range of initiatives from funding support to tax relief
• The economy and limited funding has led to the costs of starting and growing your business to be reduced, especially in terms of skilled people

Of course there is still a long way to go but there are definitely some signs that Europe is starting to create a better environment for entrepreneurs. It really could be one of the silver linings from this long and painful recession that being an entrepreneur starts to be seen as an increasingly viable alternative to the region’s older industries.

I still think that the best thing that governments could do is to just get out of the way, especially in areas like employment law, regulation and immigration, and that this would remove so much of the friction. But these things are so firmly rooted across Europe that it’s going to take time, and probably the economy to sink even further, before these entrepreneurial barriers will be broken down.

But all in all I’m hopeful that a more dynamic, a more mobile and a more risk embracing Europe can emerge from all this mess but it’s difficult to see that right now.

My friend and fellow investor, Fred Destin, calls the internet a ‘transparency enabler.’ Along similar lines, another friend and marketing guru, Paul Cash, has written a book about how businesses have nowhere to hide in this on-line and social media driven world we live in. Paul believes that the only way for companies to succeed now is to be remarkable in what they do – that they can no longer rely on their size for success and that the playing field is being leveled.

I really like both these perspectives and believe they capture a really important theme of our time.

For so long businesses have been able to exploit their size to maintain a strong position in the market. Size means you can squeeze your suppliers. Size means you can have multiple locations bringing you closer to more customers. Size means you can invest heavily in your all-important brand and distribution. Size means you can spend millions on advertising.

These great benefits of size and scale have made it difficult to compete with the big guys across many industries. The barriers to entry were just too large. Even if you had managed to develop a better product, the costs of getting out there and telling people about it were often too great – especially in the face of your competitor’s multi-million dollar marketing budgets.

The internet is changing all this. Customers now have access to so much information and choice that they can usually find an alternative product or a better price in a matter of minutes.

New businesses can now set up on-line for a fraction of what it would have cost in a pre-internet age. What’s more, they can find suppliers and customers all over the world.

If companies are not making their customers happy, no amount of advertising can make up for the avalanche of negative comments there will be across blogs, reviews, Twitter and Facebook.

We have better information and greater choice than ever before and it feels good, it feels empowering.

Established companies that don’t adapt in the face of these changes will have their market positions slowly chipped away and undermined. I think this is especially true of industries that tend to be inefficient, haven’t embraced technology, spend huge amounts on advertising, have enjoyed virtual monopolies or who really benefit from a lack of transparency. Banks are the obvious targets right now. But there are many others who are vulnerable such as cable companies, music and book publishers, insurance, traditional software vendors, telcos and newspapers. Some of these industries have already been seriously impacted by the force of these changes, others have it all to come.

All this is opening up big opportunities for start-ups to enter established markets like never before. As an investor I’m very excited about this opportunity and love nothing more than a new company who is offering a better alternative to the larger incumbents who no longer have anywhere to hide.