In life, there is debt.
There’s always that little story or a riddle of a sphinx, “ what kind of creature has three sets of imprints on the sand: four in the morning, two at noon, then three at sundown?” The answer was a man.
When you think about it, the summing up of a life living as a rugrat toddler crawling on all fours (the imprint of its hands and knees for support its 8-month old weight); evolving to a two-legged creature in most it’s adulthood; to finally a need for a cane’s support to help spread the strain of weight from the older person’s creaking knees, and to the once-firmly established muscular infrastructure.
For me, this story has always been about looking into the exchange, cyclic opportunity costs, or costs of establishing & growing, and enabling mobility.
This presents a look into a financial capacity of the young independents and their lives. Or in this case, their startups: a greater need for co-founders at the beginning, with each step and pitch likely needing a team member or two more than the needed or affordable head count, and more likely to depend more on grounded structure for its mobility. At the beginning, Most likely, you need four. It is recognised as the hipster, hacker, hustler, and sometimes you need a head incubator or the holler. (I think every startup needs a coxswain that oversees the duality of function, and keeps everyone to task, to point, or just to plain rhythmic cadence, and not go mad all over the place). Some companies call this the third wave of c-suite expansions: an IO (innovation/investment officer), an XO (experience officer), or an LO (a fancy comptroller/legal officer). The chief executive has called his cabinet to a meeting, and they answer to check in on the main stalls to task the main branches a more organised feedback mechanism that doesn’t impede the running of the machine, or its overdue to maintain itself against breaking down. A kind of mechanic for the inner machinations of sorts.
Then as you approach a more sound structure, probably a timeline of another round of funding (by the FO), or with an expansion of human resource (by the OO), or the decision to outsource to an independent advertising agency (by the MO), and possibly a collaboration to get back to the drawing board and figure out the fittings once again (by the IO), where you (the chief hipster/XO), and your co-founder (chief hacker/OO) can hire a finance head (a hustler/FO), but the round table can be firmed up to two for faster movement and mete-ing out of tasks to trickle into smaller funnels, as you pass on, ramp up product, and dial down costs for a more balanced sheet.
Whichever you choose, in the end, you always will need a third, to balance a maturing innovation-driven company, that now can probably has exited, diversified and is ready to face the task of selling, or merging, or in the case of these unicorns actually arrange a very public offer. In the end, you collapse the expanded branches of O’s in the suite, issue dividends, take pictures of those happy smiles that your company has caused over the years (shame on you), sell all the furniture and auction out the paintings, hang all the whiteboards in a space elsewhere for other rug-rats to use, close the server rooms, coil all the cords and cables and find a way to re-use the hoarded post-its and stationery some overzealous intern ordered online with your newly minted logo, In the end, you find a way to mine all the data from all the issued laptops and tablets (that’s not in your contract to really mind or that wasn’t really pointed out to you in the fine print), and give out the rainbow-coloured $7 ‘thank you for building with us’ custom tee-shirts. In the end, you only get to take home the wine-chiller to use at home.
In the end, you either seek out the option to wheel yourself out of the building with attitude, pay all whom you owe your gratitudes, (say your beatitudes), and just walk out with your size-appropriate walking stick, and call it a very, very long sick day.
