Entrepreneurs and artists have a lot in common.

They're creative.

Fearless and arrogant enough to think their ideas and inspirations can change the world.

Yet they're terrified.

Sometimes, to ensure nobody rejects them, they'll just find creative ways to hide from the public.

In the startup world, that attitude can help you raise millions in capital!

But ultimately fail.

"The irony is that it is often easier to raise money or acquire other resources when you have zero revenue, zero customers, and zero traction than when you have a small amount. Zero invites imagination, but small numbers invite questions about whether large numbers will ever materialize. Everyone knows (or thinks he or she knows) stories of products that achieved breakthrough success overnight. As long as nothing has been released and no data have been collected, it is still possible to imagine overnight success in the future. Small numbers pour cold water on that hope.

This phenomenon creates a brutal incentive: postpone getting any data until you are certain of success. Of course, such delays have the unfortunate effect of increasing the amount of wasted work, decreasing essential feedback, and dramatically increasing the risk that a startup will build something nobody wants."

What Eric Ries describes in The Lean Startup also applies to musicians and songwriters.

Except that in the music industry, that attitude has no upside whatsoever.

You're definitely not going to make millions talking your way to success like some entrepreneurs manage to do when they pitch to venture capitalists.

If your goal is to get others to hear and love your music, you have to give them a chance to hear and love your music.

You can't just keep it to yourself until you think it's perfect.

If you want to grow and improve as an artist, don't create in a vacuum.

Show your work.