In the early seventies, a simple fisherman named Cesarino Vittorio made a living selling his daily catch to locals on a rocky outcrop of Italy’s Puglian coast. The sea was Vittorio’s great love and fishing his true passion. Vittorio set up a makeshift kitchen on the rocks where his catch could be prepared with quality seasonal produce and invited the whole community to break bread, dance and hear stories together.

Over the years, the quick and dirty restaurant evolved into one of the most stunning beach clubs in Europe, frequented by the rich and famous. It inspired numerous other beach clubs over the years, that popped up along the Mediterranean in the manner of Starbucks-style franchises, each with the same pastel umbrellas, overpriced fried fish and the same music playlist on repeat. However, Vittorio’s club still stands out head and shoulders above the competition – because it offers more than just a surface level experience.

Surface has never been enough to cut through – something that all business founders would do well to remember.

3 lessons from Vittorio’s journey

1. Be authentic and unique

I’ve always believed that the best businesses in the world are born from an authentic connection to a problem, by a founder (or founding team) that live and breathe the customer experience every single day.

They have a soul, not a formula. They have passion, dance barefoot and give out anchovies, as Cesarino did. Some people won’t like those things, but that’s how you know it’s working. And when that kind of authenticity and passion connects with like-minded customers at scale, brand community begins to build and eventually, even Meryl Streep moves in.

2. Do one thing really well

In an unassuming hole-in-the-wall, Santopalato is one of Rome’s most-in-demand restaurants. Chef Sarah Cicolini, one of the country’s hottest young chefs, spends her days exploring a mathematical impossibility – the fifth quarter. This term refers to offal and the meat cuts generally discarded as the least commercially valuable, such as tripe, heart, liver, tongue and cheeks. Traditionally deemed as uncool food, offal has never been mainstream. Yet, Cicolini gives offal related ‘stuff’ centre stage on a super short menu with zero variations, and with the magic of her artisanship, the standout dish – the beef heart carpaccio – is served at every table.

Here’s what startups can learn from this culinary rockstar:

• Forget the four quarters everyone else is obsessed with. It’s boring and saturated, and we really just don’t need any more of the same, be it overpriced steak restaurants or a generic SaaS solution.
• Be focused, do one thing and do it really, really well. Don’t add margarita pizzas to your menu “just in case”. Simply stick to the thing at which you most excel and are passionate about. Even if everyone else thinks it’s tripe.

When you do that, your crowd will find you. And they will eat your equivalent raw beef hearts in a mathematical quadrant that really shouldn’t exist at all.

3. Stay focused

For centuries, tales of sirens and mermaids have been carved into ancient Mediterranean caves and etched onto Grecian vases. In Homer’s Odyssey, the goddess Circe warns Ulysses about the Sirens’ song, cautioning him not to be seduced by their beauty lest he steers off course to his death.

But following his victory in the Trojan War, it was inevitable for Ulysses to sail past Capri to return to Greece. Ultimately, with a clear plan to block his ears with beeswax and sail onwards until out of range of the island, Ulysses successfully returned to Greece a hero.

As a founder, taking risks comes with the territory. Every day there will be some new Siren song to tempt you: a new product direction, customer segment to target, feature to build or strategic pivot to pursue. The Sirens that beckon ambitious founders have always been powerfully seductive, but they can also be dangerously distracting. Fatal sometimes.

In the face of that kind of temptation, the question is not whether the song is beautiful, but whether it keeps you on course and helps you fast-track the journey to your destination. Otherwise it’s just another dangerous distraction like the one from last week and the one that will tempt you again tomorrow.

So gather your crew, align on the plan and have them tie you to the mast. Stay focused and sail toward your destination without distraction. Ignore the Siren’s song until you make landfall. Only then might you (and your startup) arrive a hero.

By Steve Maarbani, CEO of VentureCrowd

This article was first published by Kochie’s Business Builders