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Rhythm in Start-Ups

Creative genius needs structure to “get things done”

Feliks Eyser
The Startup
7 min readSep 16, 2019

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Illustrations handmade with ❤ by Ariane Frida Sofie

Orchestras and jazz bands

If IBM was an imposing symphony orchestra, your start-up would be a jamming jazz band. A handful of talented, yet probably inexperienced musicians meet in a dimly lit, underfurnished backyard rehearsal room to create beautiful melodies on the fly. Most of the music is improvised. Maybe the instruments aren’t even tuned to each other. Dave the drummer doesn’t show up — which he’s prone to do — but you start your session anyway.

While the IBM behemoth of an orchestra is perfectly structured and organized to the bones, your jazz band is refreshingly chaotic and the music excitingly unpredictable. With the orchestra, you’ll get what you expect. In your jam session, you never know if you’ll produce the next hit or the whole group falls apart before the second verse.

The one thing they share

The orchestra and the jazz band don’t share many rules, but there is one thing they both respect: The rhythm, which the musicians follow. In a jam, you can be as creative as you want, as long as your sound follows the same basic pattern as the rest of the band. If each musician starts to play in their own rhythm, the music will sound chaotic and fall apart.

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The Startup
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Feliks Eyser
Feliks Eyser

Written by Feliks Eyser

Tech founder & investor from 🇩🇪. Sharing experiences for first-time founders💡🛠🚀

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