Start-up;
It’s fresh. It’s new, it’s exciting, there are endless possibilities.
The business;
It’s been around the block, every day is a new day in the mission of surviving and building, the excitement is about the long term, you can see what success might look like and failure, you’ve been close a few times old friend.
What about you?
How do you know when you’re no longer running a start-up? I don’t think you ever do, in the same way, the “old” the weather-beaten version of you in the mirror still feels like the same joey-bag-of-doughnuts that busted some bad-ass moves on the dance floor 10 years ago.
No, hang on, let’s try that again. You can feel like you’re running a business. But if you do, then you've lost, it’s time to move on.
Why?
A start-up is about innovation, which means doing something different to the norm to create something better.
Every business should always be striving to improve. Otherwise, you’re toast. Maybe not today, perhaps not tomorrow, but not in a million years either. In technical terms, incremental iterative improvement is the goal of “staying alive”.
So you need to always be a start-up.
More importantly you always need to feel like you can innovate. If you’re stuck in a rut then the creative juice has run dry and it’s time to squeeze a different orange.
Innovation might start with a big idea, but it ends with incremental improvement on execution.
This is important, super important.
The companies that do it well, do well;
- Apple; incremental improvement on iPhone’s has basically kept them in warm slippers and cups of coco for many years.
- Microsoft; same product line, incrementally improved has given consistent revenue with good margins.
- Ford; incremental improvement.
- Sony; same product line, new products.
Persistence, resilience, innovation and introspection, incremental improvement.
