What Your Startup Can Learn from the World Cup
I recently read an article talking about how, in preparation for the World Cup English Football Manager Gareth Southgate flew to America to watch a basketball game between two mediocre basketball teams in the middle of winter to learn about plays. His hypothesis was that — “perhaps he could apply basic NBA plays — the pick-and-roll, off-ball screens and constant motion — to football”.
As I write this, England’s sitting 90 minutes away (I’m aware this post may not age well) from reaching the World Cup semi-finals, with much of England’s success built on set plays, it’s safe to say it’s worked out fairly well. This led me down a rabbit hole that concluded with this: success really is ubiquitous across platforms.
success really is ubiquitous across platforms.
So as an ongoing um… exercise researching how successful team succeed (and totally not an excuse to continue watching football), here’s a couple of pointers I’ve stolen from the world’s most popular sport that will help your startup, particularly when you’re just starting out:
Point to the Trophy
Part of the reason sports are so loved is because the objectives are simple. The objective is to win. Usually that involves your team putting more balls into a net than other teams, or however your favourite sport keeps score. If your team wins the most times (or at the most critical times) in what they call “a season”, they get a shiny tin cup and pour champagne on each other, and you’ve scored yourself a built in excuse to call in sick at work the next day.
Everybody understands this — the players, the coaching staff, the fans. When the team falls short of the goal, everybody also understands this. The same goes for your startup. What’s your version of the champagne covered celebration? What will make your customers feel like they’ve won it all? How about your team? Your investors?
Paint the picture of the trophy for them, and then go and get it. It’s helpful to create a short term play as well as a long term vision, because ain’t nobody got time to trust the process.
Don’t Create, Steal
I guarantee you, whatever strategies are employed by the winning team at the World Cup this year, teams in football leagues around the world will be implementing it for their own squads before the rest of us learn how to spell Fernandinho. Most sports leagues are copycat leagues, and for good reason. It’s ridiculously easy to copy a set piece or deploy different lineups, especially when it’s proven to have worked on a big stage like the World Cup.
The same applies to your startup, especially when you’re trying to find product market fit. We’re in 2018 now — the age of open source, youtube, and instant messaging. There is absolutely no reason anybody should be coding their own landing pages. Use Instapage, Wishpond, Unbounce, Wix, LaunchRock — the list goes on, and it’s easy enough that a 5 year old could do it. It goes beyond landing pages — there is an API for almost anything you can think of (yes there’s API’s for building an API), and tools like IFTTT and Zapier can fill in the gaps for you as you figure out what your customer wants and doesn’t want. Google Ventures has a created a beautiful design sprint process that gets you a high fidelity prototype in 5 days without a line of code so your nontechnical team has no excuses not to go out and find a customer market fit.
I’m not attempting to belittle the role of technical professionals in early stage startups — but freeing their workload from menial tasks like customer prototypes and landing pages allows them to have headspace to solve larger, more interesting problems. The less technical debt you incur early on, the better you’ll be.
Strategize Your Formations
Football fanatics live for formations and lineup strategies. They are the source of the biggest debates on r/soccer. Should Portugal have gone with a 4–3–3 instead of a 4–4–2? Which attacker should Belgium start? Who’s going to get Messi the ball for Argentina?
In the same way, when your team is small, it’s easy to say that everybody wears multiple hats and does a bit of everything. But the best teams define roles. I’m not just talking about the title on the business card, but specifically what role each person plays for each task. Who is doing the copy and who is doing distribution? Don’t just lump it all under marketing. Take time to understand your team members’ individual strengths, weaknesses, and potential, and plan accordingly.
Savvy teams not only do this well, but they strategize different formations in different situations. A simple example would be choosing to send the CTO to pitch your company if it’s a technical crowd, versus having the CEO do it because “it’s their job”. Make the best plans, and then don’t be afraid to adapt on the fly when it suits your company’s needs.
As obvious as these tips seem to be, I’ve spent the last 4ish years at Launch Academy saying pretty much same things to hundreds of companies, so perhaps the best tip is for you to watch more foo — wait, Brazil lost this morning? Football sucks, the refs suck, Neymar sucks, and you suck. Ktnxbye.
About Sam
Sam is the Head of Programs at Launch Academy, Vancouver’s leading startup hub. He also spearheads the Maple Program- the first program designed to work with the Canadian Start-up Visa Program process.is created to aid international companies in their growth and expansion to Canada and North America. Every four years, he is a bandwagon supporter of Brazilian football because Canada has never made it into the dance during his lifetime. You can reach Sam on Twitter @anothersamchan or on LinkedIn.
