Marco Polo will save your startup
Hugh Capet was the first “King of the Franks” who started a 330 years old dynasty and a power line stretching over 800 years.
The secret of his success is that in a time when everybody wanted to be the Emperor, he humbly decided to be the King of France.
This choice allowed him to kick all the would-be Emperor’s asses.
This is a huge lesson if you are building a startup.
You see, every startup wants to dominate the world market.
In other words, everybody wants to be Emperor.
But this is just a dream, not a strategy.
Of course you need a dream to aim high, but you need a strategy to get there.
The lesson startups may learn from old Hugh Capet is that you may want to first dominate you home market before you go abroad.
This is nothing new of course, but now I feel more comfortable pursuing it.
If it worked for the King of France, it may work for us too.
But why am I writing this? Because I discovered a new way to get ideas for my startup:
Ignore startups books and learn History.
It’s not just the often cited “Art of War”.
You’re not in this game to win just a battle, you want to build an empire.
It all started when I wanted to know how to build an empire.
So I searched books about empire building.
In the last months I read about the Roman empire, watched BBC documentaries on the Renaissance and now I am reading the whole history of Italy in several books.
It’s amazing how much you learn from that.
A couple of examples:
Constantin’s Instagram
As you may know Emperor Constantin is the one who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman world about three centuries after founder Jesus Christ launched it.
The empire was struggling and Christianity was on a hockey stick growth curve, so instead of fighting it, he aquihired this new viral religion and used it to save his dominion.
The move didn’t make sense to many at the time, but it paid off handsomely.
You could say he saw where the users were going and acted accordingly with great flexibility.
A bit like Facebook with Instagram?
You see, a weak point of analyzing the big guy’s moves and deciding your strategy based on that, is that Facebook or Google story is still unfolding.
Saying “Facebook bought Instagram, so we should buy X to grow our user base” is dangerous because we still don’t know whether that move was actually good.
History has no loose ends.
Florence’s Stripe
In Florence at a certain point a single banker had more money than any other King in Europe.
Florentine banks lent to Kings and were the bankers of the Pope (not a poor guy himself to this day).
How did they get there? Florence had no particular advantage suggesting it would become the richest city in Europe.
The florentines used an idea: they created a disruptive banking model and spread it with branches in every country.
Maybe like Paypal or Stripe?
The list could go on and on.
So, my suggestion today is to give up the next “how to grow your startup” 20 U$ book and get a free copy of any history book at your local library.
It’s ten years of unfinished bedtime tales against thousands of years of history.
Let me leave you with a suggestion.
A History of Venice probably available for free at your local library as it’s one of the best books on the subject ever written:
You’ll be learning from a startup born by running away from the barbarians and hiding on some muddy islands.
It became the biggest power in Europe and lasted 1000 years.
If Marco Polo’s bet of going East actually mean the success of your startup, let me know!
