Time & Perspective Quote by John Kluge

Kluge’s line lands like a quiet rebuke to the cult of hustle: before you sprint, decide what race you’re actually running. Coming from a businessman who built a media empire through patient, opportunistic deals, the advice isn’t self-help fluff; it’s strategy. “An awful lot of time” is doing real work here. It frames deliberation not as hesitation but as an underpriced asset in a startup culture that treats speed as morality.

The phrase “what they want to go into” sounds almost plain, but it smuggles in a sharper premise: the sector you choose will choose you back. Industry structure, regulation, capital intensity, distribution moats, and even cultural timing can matter more than raw effort. Kluge is nudging young founders toward the unglamorous question of fit: not just “What am I passionate about?” but “Where can I be unfairly advantaged, and where does the market reward that advantage?”

There’s also a generational subtext. Kluge came up in an era when careers and companies were built over decades, when compounding mattered and patience could outcompete brilliance. He’s implicitly skeptical of entrepreneurship as identity or performance. “Want” isn’t mere desire; it’s a commitment to a terrain you’ll have to learn intimately, including its boring parts.

Contextually, the quote reads as a pre-mortem for common founder failure: chasing a vague idea of entrepreneurship rather than a specific problem, customer, and ecosystem. Kluge is telling you to pick a door carefully, because once you walk through it, the room rearranges you.