Marten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus and contributing author of the No Fear Book, discusses his entrepreneurial learnings as a part of Stanford University’s Technology Venture –  Thought Leader’s Lecture Series.

‘‘ Believe in something bigger than yourself’‘ a phrase which Marten reiterates throughout the lecture almost like mantra.   ``I believe that entrepreneurialism is a belief system´´–  In order to succeed you must have an overwhelming belief in your entrepreneurial soul which resonates with something that is bigger than yourself. Yet this fundamental belief that you are working towards, something which transcends you as a person must be rooted in an unwavering belief in yourself. That being said for the seed of something great to come into fruition, there will always be the time when the belief in yourself may not be enough to weather all the storms that life sends your way, and for these circumstances you must have someone who believes in you.

In this video Marten discusses the experiences which have shaped him as an entrepreneur, and how these skills were applied or cultivated at MySQL, during the revolution of database technology. Bringing it back to belief, Marten states that  at MySQL “We had a BELIEF that we must bring superior database technology to the world” Through this belief, and by applying open source to databases MySQL became what Marten describes as the IKEA of Databases ” Modern Scandinavian design, you have to do a little assembly yourself, but it is much cheaper much faster and much more mordern and if you don’t like it …throw it away and buy the next one´´

It is your belief which much drive you. Currently now at Eucalyptus Systems, Marten serves the connoisseurs of cloud computing. They BELIEVE that everybody should have the ability  to develop  their own cloud infrastructure. At then end of the day putting aside all the everyday tasks it all comes back to what you believe in- WHAT YOU MUST DO. Through the speed and chaos that comes through driving a start-up you can easily lose your perspective. Knowing what you believe in allows you to transcend the day to day and understand where you are going.

As all good concepts Marten does remind us that there is always two sides to every coin, and there will always come a time when you have no choice but to pivot your direction and adjust your strategy. What you need to be able to decided is how you receive advice; when to try to weather the storm and when to cut your losses.

”Start-Ups will give you the tramatic moments where you really need someone to believe in you because you are ready to stop believing in yourself, but also the joy of doing things that  no one ever has before”