Stop building startups our world doesn’t need

I have been taking part in the Founder Institute program, which helps new and seasoned entrepreneurs start scalable businesses.

I am loving it. It’s been giving me tremendous momentum to progress on my business instead of being caught up in it.

I get to hear dozens of bright, entrepreneurial minds give startup pitches.

I felt concerned to observe that so many business models are still:

• making money by hijacking the consumer’s brains, following the very business models that led to the overconsumption-driven mess we are in.
• optimizing for breadth of scale rather than depth of impact.
• developing apps that distance people rather than foster togetherness — something we radically need in our world.
• creating more entertainment and distractions, instead of energizing people to live their purpose and contribute something that makes them feel alive.
• solving problems that are far removed from what humans need and what is urgent and important for our world.

Business as usual is business as lethal. We need impact startups now like the world is going to crash tomorrow.

Corona ? It’s our global society receiving the first hit, and the first hint, at what is coming.

We don’t know how many years we have before society as we know it gets majorly disrupted, in a way that will make living on earth much harder. Some models like Deep Adaptation predict we only have a few years. And they didn’t factor in Corona-like events. In fact it’s already getting worse than predicted on the climate level.

I believe our world does not need the next models of Ferrari or Porsche to be released. Probably ever. We don’t have time to optimize non-critical products. We urgently need these smart engineers working instead on higher priority problems in our world.

Our world doesn’t need a city to upgrade its local stadium for $535 million and lure thousands to drink beer and cheer at teams who compete to push a ball into a net. When money is needed elsewhere to support lives, educate and wake people up.

As much as the upcoming 5G may seem like an exciting tech, is it really urgent and important for our world? It is planned to use ~$1 trillion of human and material resources. Now, what if these thousands of CEOs, managers and engineers would focus instead on solving problems that urgently need solutions?

It’s not good enough anymore to ask “Does what I do have a positive impact?”
The question is “Does it have an impact on what is urgent and important for our world”? In other words, what is the impact-effectiveness of what you do?

We can’t keep diverting our precious focus on building startups that optimize things like our shopping experience, to help us choose the best whisky …or solve other micro-problems, just to make our life 0,01% more convenient. My friend calls these cutely “PPs”, paradise problems.

So, what does our world need?

We certainly need systems & structures changes. That’s what the 17 sustainable development goals of the UN aim to map out. But these efforts, along most climate change movements, are mostly about transforming the external world.

I believe we need as much, if not more, impact at the root of the system.

At the root are our minds.

We are currently in a mental health epidemic: loneliness epidemic, obesity epidemic (connected to mental wellness), narcissism epidemic, disengagement at work (~80%), lack of purpose (75 % of people are aimless).

To heal this we need, in my view, 2 ingredients:

1. fostering togetherness among ourselves.
2. each of us developing the mental awareness & consciousness that comes from training the brain, at depth.

Of all ingredients, these are the 2 most potent, and relatively easiest to put in place.

How does it work in practice? It looks like this:

1. We need movements that form communities in a scalable way. Potentially millions of small conscious groups.

I believe we humans are wired to operate at our best in small clusters (5 to 9) within larger groups. Yet most people I see around me live without being connected to anything but loose, weak structures that don’t provide the sense of safety, emotional support and purpose we need as humans to live meaningful lives. Even being part of a family is not always fulfilling enough. Work is for many of us the closest to a tribe we have, but it fails to meet our deeper needs.

2. We need conscious leaders to bring and hold these communities together.
I used to think leadership was out of reach. We don’t have to become the next Conscious CEO (C2EO). One can start local and small — and organically learn leadership skills. For instance, by organizing a regular mastermind with 3 to 8 people you want to grow with.
Masterminds have changed the way I connect with others. It is my favorite model because it’s low friction and scalable. We builds precious bonds by going in depth with each other. And it takes each of us back on track with our deeper purpose, while dissolving hold-backs.
(I dream of a world where masterminds would spread faster than Corona.)

The new wave of conscious leaders is hatching in their cocoon. They’ll be out soon.

3. To create these leaders, we need conscious practices
These conscious leaders haven’t quite emerged in numbers yet.

For conscious leaders to show up, we need a culture of training our minds for deeper states of awareness and consciousness. These practices open our brains to process more information in a deeper way, and lead to experiencing more love, compassion, and connection to others.

• There’s an important distinction to be made here. These inner shifts don’t happen in us by soaking in more books, videos, news about the world, data analysis and other cognitive knowledge. It’s neither just about habits, nor just retraining our sense of identity and thinking patterns. It’s deeper than that. It requires the practice of training the mind, usually through meditation, inner work, purpose-deepening, healing work and embodiment practices.
• Another necessary distinction: the current spread of asanas classes (what we in the west call yoga) and mindfulness meditation are a start, but they stay on the surface. We need to learn how to change the root of our mental operating system. One key set of practices here are insight meditation practices, for they go much deeper than regular mindfulness.

I believe the future business opportunities lie within these three movements. This new ‘Togetherness industry’, powered by conscious businesses and startups, are a major vehicle to fixing the situation we are in.

How now?

We can’t wait a long time for the top-down approach of the UN to take effect — it’s time we don’t have.

But we each can start being the change we want to see. This requires transforming our minds, rewiring our brains at the root — and at scale.

The good news is this is a virtuous, self-growing cycle.

We humans all each want to feel alive and buzzing with energy. I believe our brains are wired so that we most come alive when we contribute something that helps others and makes the world a better place.

To paraphrase Howard Thurman:

“What can you contribute that makes you come alive? Because what our world needs is people who come alive when they contribute.”

• If you are in a job in a #business-we-dont-need. Can you start searching for or create a more meaningful job?
• Would you consider forming your own mastermind with 3–8 people you want to grow with, and bring yourself and your group to live their purpose? Here is how to start one.
• If you have an entrepreneurial heart, what meaningful problem can you gather a team around and solve for the rest of us?

As anyone, I am only speaking from my current level of consciousness. I welcome your feedback.

#businesses-we-dont-need