Colombo

So it’s 1492 and you’re sitting around Europe fretting about the fact that the Ottoman Turks have disrupted your normal trade routes to India and China.  You’ve got this flat Earth you’re trying to navigate but the Italians and the Arabs call different distances a mile so it’s kind of hard to figure out how you’re going to keep bringing in those supplies of opium spices and silk.  And then, some crazy Italian named Colombo shows up in the Spanish Court.

I know – the rest is the history that we celebrate today.  But what are we celebrating?  The fact that this nut job miscalculated the distance he had to go by about 7,000 miles?  Turns out he was basing all his calculations on shorter Italian miles and not on the Arabic miles in which the original data were presented.  But I don’t think that’s it.

Are we celebrating that he had no clue where he was when he stepped off the boat and called the natives “Indians” thinking he was in the Indies?  Probably not.

Are we celebrating that he was wrong about degrees of longitude to be traversed and wrong about distance per degree so he stood a great chance of running out of supplies and killing his men and himself?  Nope.

Are we celebrating that he was turned down by lots of financiers including the King of Portugal and Queen Isabella of Spain, who had referred the decision to a committee?  The committee said no but old Chris hung around for 2 years until King Ferdinand finally got his wife to agree to fund him – put that in your VC courtship hat and smoke it!

No, I think we celebrate the human spirit today.  The belief in an idea and the courage and persistence to see it through.  Sure, it helps to find pieces of good fortune like the Trade Winds along the way to help make your dream some true, but luck is the residue of design and, as Famous Amos says:

You show me a lucky person and I’ll show you someone who on some level, has done some preparation. You just can’t wake up one morning and be lucky. There’s no such thing as luck. The harder I work, the luckier I get. The more I prepare, the luckier I become.

So hats off to you, Signore Colombo.  And hopefully each of us can find that idea and fight hard to make it real.