Startups: the lost idea

What exactly is a startup?

Nowadays, we tend to call a startup every company that is born. If a company is small, young, and (not necessary) orbits around technology, it’s a startup. It’s not my intention to delve into definitions, but it’s important to remark, that we sometimes misuse this term. In fact, a startup is a company (or organization) that is in the search phase. It examines existing markets or creates new, to scale and grow. Startup is about innovation and changing status quo. Therefore, a new mobile apps development studio is not a startup in terms of the market, maybe only from the founders perspective, if they do business for the first time. Neither we can call a startup another SaaS company, just because it runs its products on smartphones. Smartphones are nothing exceptional for years now.

The real-life discriminant of a startup actually hides in details. That is, we can intuitively “feel” if it’s startup or not. One can even craft screws, but if he’s doing Agile, talks about MVP, builds lean canvas, use Trello, Mac and other stuff, works 16h per day for free — it’s definitely a startup. If it’s heroic, bold, and has something to do with technology, we feel it’s a startup. In that case, those brave young “serial entrepreneurs” straight road to business Valhalla is a hoax.

We see startups in TV news, in shows and art. They became a part of our culture. I don’t think there’s something reprehensible about it, but on the other hand popularity of this popcultural, false perception of a startup holds us from seeing that maybe we’re doing the whole thing wrong.

Going mainstream, getting stiff

As one wise man said, the only difference between constant, steady movement and stagnation is speed. World changes fast, and with the world also the “rules” that let one get competitive advantage, attract customers, optimize costs, etc. Moreover, the speed of change is bigger than ever. Nonetheless, the dull, popcultural “serial entrepreneurs’ ” startup world has fallen in love with itself, moves steady not giving a damn, and makes one big mental mistake visible in many symptoms. Let me point these symptoms out, just to clarify why we should rethink the situation.

Acceptance

Startup is about questioning everything. Now, we easily accept the rules, modus operandi. We question nothing, and agree silently to everything. Maybe it’s about education, maybe about millennials impact, boredom, laziness, whatever. We’re okay with those strange VC whims about scale, growth, ROI, etc. We do Lean Startup, pivot, mvp, quick go to market, and so on. Why? Because somebody told us that’s the best way. We believe, because the way proven to work, 15 years ago. When all the serial entrepreneurs were still playing their LEGOs. How one could change status quo, if he’s so easily drawn into dancing to somebody’s tune?

Recurrence

Unique, extraordinary things aren’t same as their predecessors. They’re not ordinary, ex termini. Startup is build for uniqueness. But now we know so much about doing startup. We have rules, books, experience, thoughts. Along them goes methodologies, conferences, accelerators and others. All of those help us create more smooth and harmonious companies and products. Actually, some steps are almost mechanical, because they’ve been repeated so many times. Startup factories employ startup engineers. I myself once wrote an article about the typical path the startup goes, just because it became so predictable. There’s no two same grains of sand, how in the world can we believe same paths works for everyone?

Seeing the trees, not the wood

Tools are made to help us with our work, they don’t solve problems. People do. Modern startup world bathes in this excessive ocean of handy apps and services, of course also grown as a startups. And in aftermath, a human being trying to get things done is hardly visible behind Trello board, burning chart and business model canvas hanging on the wall. Eventually, he also forgets what it was all about.

Thoughtlessness

Having methodologies, tools and investors imprinting their will with rules and howtos, it’s easier to do your job. Not creating a value, developing new stuff, but just staying blinkered. We’ve brought innovation and entrepreneurship to a form of coal mining, where you have to deliver day by day, fill excel table and achieve goals. At some point entrepreneurs silently and unconsciously agree to follow. We not only accept the world as they tell us it is, but also tend to have absolutely zero afterthoughts about it.

Conservatism

I remember two opposite approaches to risk in startups history. First was to immerse into it, to embrace it and love it. People believed, that risk toughens the fragile young flesh of growing business. The more risk the better, just as it were some kind of extreme sport, where you seek adrenaline rush. The second approach, hysterical risk management — originated from corporate legacy. Big companies taught us the ways to minimize risk, squeeze it and take it under control. The latter reigns in modern entrepreneurship world, but in a little less intensive form. Although I don’t see any of those approaches as proper, the bloated startup society became too conservative and preservative, trying to omit risky decisions, and therefore missing on some tough but often needed steps. That’s absolutely not how one makes a change.

(By the way, I don’t think risk is something you can “manage” in the way we tend to understand this term. Actually, the two approaches to risk I’ve described gets the whole concept totally wrong. Risk is not a building block you can move from place to place in your strategy. Nor is it an ennobling burden. It’s a byproduct of decisions. Sometimes it’s bigger, sometimes you can avoid it for a while, but if you hit the bumpy road of entrepreneurship, you have to be ready to face it. Seeing life as a series of choices between one and the other draws your attention to these byproducts. But instead of choices, you can see your path as a series of decisions. The difference is subtle, but when you decide, not choose, risk isn’t crucial, just inevitable.)

The diagnosis

I’ve mentioned a mental mistake we make, that stands behind all the symptoms described above. It is very simple to name, yet hard to overcome. Our mistake is that we think, that doing an innovative business in our days have any rules or guidelines, that always works. We’re wrong thinking, that doing a startup is some kind of discipline, that you can master if you learn diligently enough. People, for example, eagerly mention the greats of our digital times, like Jobs, Bezos or the Google guys and try to learn from their doings, the way they perceived the world, their mistakes, etc. Like, OK, if Steve Jobs was an ass to his employees, that’s the way. If he begun in the garage — we should move to a garage. If Steve wore a black golf and jumpers — by that means we shall manifest our uniqueness. Maybe it sounds a little bit too radical, but if you look deeper you’ll see, that this copycat attitude is everywhere. In tools, methods, organizational culture, and what’s worst, in goals we put.

We should realize, that change comes faster than we can learn someone’s way. By the time you know, there’s no place you can use your knowledge. The knowledge inflation is huge, especially in IT sector. World is the ultimate complexity, so it’s an illusion to think, that if Steve were born 20 years later, he’d be the same guy today, only doing slightly different iPhone, made out of glass. There’s no two identical arrangements of events in history, and a barely visible twist of circumstances could be crucial even for game-changers. What’s more, our proverbial 20 yo younger Steve would have been a different person, raised up in different world. Different people acts differently to succeed. They use different tools, make different decisions and fails differently.

Actually, this “follow what succeeds” strategy is only a tip of a huge, disappointing iceberg of our transformed society. The wild spirit that inspired the creation of new markets, new needs and products, is somehow gone. We’re comfortable enough today to not follow our guts, just like the great did, and I’m talking here about our whole life attitude, not merely some business misconceptions.

Be reckless. Go outside the box

I don’t think that any way of doing business is wrong. If it’s about doing money and it works, it’s OK. I also don’t think that everybody should change the world — we’re living here and now, hence ability to live simply is maybe the biggest virtue. I respect the great innovators equally as I appreciate hard workers humbly doing their job — there’s no universal hierarchy that ranks us by our deeds and motivations. As a matter of fact, nor do I reject following methodologies or practices — it’s fine to share our thoughts and inspire ourselves as much as we can.

I want to send the simplest message of all — follow your gut. There’s no book that tells an individual how to do his thing. Nobody knows what drives you better than you, and probably nobody can describe the world as it is today, with whole its diversity. If there’s no external wisdom of who you are and where exactly do you exist, there’s no chance anyone will give you prescription of success. So the only reasonable solution is do it your way — don’t follow, nor reject authorities. Don’t be lean, but also don’t be stubborn. Stop naming things and comparing everything to those names. Stop building things as they used to be built, instead listen to what you feel is ok for you. And yes, if you want to create yet another social network or photo sharing app — build the god damn app, as long as that’s exactly what your inner “you” is ought to do.

Living and working your way concerns also your goals. Same as with the path, nobody can tell you where you should go. There’s no universal goal to achieve, because nobody knows what’s out there to discover. They also don’t know what lays inside of you, so don’t hesitate to be naive. We should all agree, nobody knew one could convince almost every human being to use a phone. Nobody expected, that a personal computer could be so indispensable. Nobody has a knowledge to tell you how to go and where to go. Define what does it mean for to succeed, or don’t — it’s up to you whether you need it.

Maybe the best advice for modern world, is to give up the box we put ourselves in. Drop the concepts, stereotypes, decencies, rules and commandments. Chop wood, write code, play ball or change the world. Whatever, if it fits what’s within.

Sir Ken Robinson once told a great story. A little six year old girl was in a drawing lesson. The teacher said this little girl hardly ever paid any attention — but in this drawing lesson, she was sitting at the back, drawing. The teacher was fascinated and went over to her and said, ‘what are you drawing?’ And the little girl responded, ‘I’m drawing a picture of God’. The teacher took a step back and said, ‘but nobody knows what God looks like.’ And the little girl said, ‘they will in a minute’.