by Sonia Lin
However, as so many people are connecting all the time, exchanging cards and ideas, these people can easily become no more than one of those names in a long list of LinkedIn connections, just as others’ names are on theirs.
Therefore, it makes sense to either focus on meaningful relationships that create mutual values, or simply have fun hanging out. Being in the room full of a whole bunch of other ambitious, forward-thinking entrepreneurs can easily convince people they’re onto something big, but this is not where things get done. These meetups should be treated as water coolers, never forgetting that there’s a company to build.
The Perfect Launch
After God knows how long, the day finally comes that’s been planned and dreamed about numerous times. Going over the plan again and checking off all these items, people, and services that should be ready, it may feel like something is bound to be missing, and something can randomly ruin the perfect launch that the team has planned for so meticulously.
But freaking out and ruining the team morale is the last thing to do on this day. Most likely, a lot of things that are ready won’t even be used due to all sorts of situations — mispredicted traffic, unexpected needs that require more resources, or even because nothing in particular is achieved that day. No matter what happens, the launch day can be considered as just a point along the continuum of the life of the startup. It’s the long-term viability and values that are more worth attention than a launch day.
No Matter What, You’ve Still Got Pizza
Chapter 3
Co-foundership
Even though the analogy of a co-foundership to a marriage is an old one, it is still incredibly accurate about the dynamics between co-founders. However, as most depictions are based on the part where the perfect match is made in the initial stage, the emphasis here is on the long-term sustainability of the co-foundership for the company’s growth in order to achieve its business goals.
Do You Need a Co-founder?
While a lot of startup ideas germinate from a casual lunch or a round of beers, it’s natural for those involved to form a pact to take these ideas to the next level. However, a chat is temporary and whimsical, but working based on a chat is a drag-along process. First of all, is a co-founder necessary to pursue the venture, and if so, what is the purpose of one?
For companionship, it’s better to get a cat. For someone to drink the Kool-Aid with, maybe. For peer pressure and accountability, sure. For expertise that is highly sought after, the business is going to be in trouble if it relies on one individual — because that person is likely to have a well-paid job somewhere else, have little time for a side venture, and might leave before putting enough time into the startup to pan out to anything. A better choice is someone who wants to grow and learn, and is in sync with the founder (meaning making it to one meeting won’t require rearranging five things). Anything can be learned if the desire is strong enough, and becoming an expert quickly can happen while growing with the company. It may be essential to cut back on time-consuming things that seem to require great expertise for the time being, depending on the stage the company is at, to avoid drowning. One example is that it’s not necessary to be a computer science graduate to build a functional prototype, as a few tutorials can give enough of a head start, but when the company website has to accommodate traffic like that on Facebook, a team of experienced tech people in charge of different parts of the website will definitely be needed to handle the job.
Tip:
There are quite a few websites to look for your potential co-founder online, such as FounderDating, CoFoundersLab, Founder2be, etc., while there are also plenty of offline events listed on event management sites including Meetup and Eventbrite to make connections in person. While the former is a great way to meet a bigger pool of people with particular skillsets, the latter provides the in-person connections that matter a lot more than paper credentials in a startup.
Co-founder’s Dilemma
One good thing about having co-founders is for them to remind each other of their downfalls that may affect the company. However, as the relationship builds, things can get personal, and big things can get delayed for small things that get blown up. While it’s essential to put the brakes on patterns that are detrimental to the company, it’s hardly possible to change somebody’s personal beliefs, pet peeves, preferences, or other traits that together contribute to one’s uniqueness, and therefore to the minor fallouts that could eventually bring the business to a halt. How to go about channeling somebody’s uniqueness into the business but not have that person’s downfalls manifest negatively is a constant struggle in a close working relationship, as they are two sides of the same coin.
Match Made in Heaven
Good Cop, Bad Cop
This pattern is more common when the team has expanded beyond the founders and other people report to them. The good thing about having co-founders when hiring is that it’s easy to put on a show and together exert more power to keep the hires working. An imagined conversation from a co-founder to a potential hire might go like this: “Michael wasn’t so impressed with your design, but I fought for you because I see something in your work.” Or, to a team member to encourage putting in more work and hours: “I’m not sure what you’re up to, but Mandy has concerns over your commitment to the company. I need you to know I’m with you, but you need to prove your worth.” These statements may not even be true in their references to the other person, but they come out very powerfully through a middle person.
There is a fine line between management and manipulation. If someone likes this kind of drama too much, a team with few people can easily be buried in Microsoft-level fights which can take up all the valuable talents and resources. An established organization can stay afloat with this kind of drama because of relatively stable revenue and continuously incoming talent, but these fights can kill a startup that has few resources to spare.
All Is Fair in Love and … Startup
Distance
Haven’t many people had the experience of looking at one word for so long that it doesn’t look like that word anymore? The same is true for a person seen every day. The same is true for one task that’s been worked on for too long. This is the rationale for leaving distance at the office to avoid being freaked out by another person’s keyboard littered with potato chip crumbs. It’s also wise to have a safe escape somewhere out of the office to get away from fights over stupid things, and to have a designated period of time per day or week when people ordinarily seen every day absolutely do not see or talk with each other. The sight lost when immersion in a co-foundership is too deep will be regained by living in the real world; the insights regained by reflecting internally and interacting with the rest of the world will bring new energy to the co-foundership.
Trust
There is a Chinese folk tale that tells how one person’s suspicion can interfere with his judgment. A man loses his axe and suspects that his neighbor stole it. He observes this guy very closely, finding that the more he looks, the more this guy seems to have stolen his axe. One day, he finds his axe, which he had misplaced somewhere else. Now when he looks at his neighbor, he doesn’t look like a thief anymore. Similar situations arise in science, where the term “observer’s effect” in physics describes how an object being observed is altered at the same time.
How this concept plays into a co-foundership is that when two people are as passionate about an idea they believe will be a world-changing business, it’s easy for either of them to become possessive and delusional. It’s like two parents vying for the attention of their beloved child who can end up in court competing for guardianship. The child here, the startup, is a premature thing, which may not even make its way to daylight when the war rages on.
Communication
In a startup, where the infrastructure and reporting system aren’t formal, open communication is definitely important and can’t be stressed too often. However, the dilemma comes in when productivity and com
munication can be in conflict with each other — too many meetings and co-working sessions can compromise quality of thinking and work requiring uninterrupted long periods of time, and too many emails and phone calls can compromise productivity and invite unnecessary discussions over details.
People coming from corporate backgrounds or with a track record of promotions are especially susceptible to overcommunication, as that’s how the conventional workplace judges an individual. However, in a startup, that’s counterproductive — it’s how many bells and whistles can be left out to make things work and expand, not how many issues are brought to the table and how much people get themselves heard. If too much time is spent on talking and huddling between co-founders, that is one big flag — they might be running a fraternity, not a company.
Chapter 4
Demands of Startup Culture
The startup world is infamously demanding in terms of the working hours, caliber of work, and determination. However, in this aura of insanity and rulelessness, it’s hard to draw the line between, for example, cutting-edge and useless, perfection and minutiae, influence and politics.
It’s essentially impossible to get it right every step of the way when starting a business, simply because there is no need to — as there’s always trial and error, which is where surprises usually appear. On top of that, when a single standard is placed on everyone regardless of his or her unique assets and preferences, what comes out of it is a group of corporate robots, which defeats the purpose of a startup.
Rapid Development
Logo Matters
So how important is a logo? Some might advocate for its utmost importance because it’s the face of the brand and it’s the first thing people come to know about the brand; others might say that every aspect of a business makes up the entire user experience, and the logo is only part of this.
Regardless of opinion, the point is not the logo per se, but what is really worth spending time fixing — and the user is the one who can convey what’s really sticking out. When someone is deep in the woods for a very long time, it is easy to become blind and lose sight of the whole picture. Everything gets magnified, and then everything looks horribly wrong. In a start-up, this may mean beating up on both self and the team, and then the situation spirals down until the whole thing slips badly downhill — because the vision made it so.
The attachment of all the various stakeholders to a new business can be its worst enemy, not unlike a newborn with too many parents correcting what seems to be unruly behavior. It’s advisable to get unattached outside perspectives, especially potential customers, because they are ultimately the ones who can tell.
Holiday Conference Call
Those dedicated entrepreneurs locked at their desk at all times may have grown to realize that to even enjoy themselves a bit is not only odd but also unacceptable. When they are not addressing emails, they count the ticking minutes by the dollar. When they are around people, they are compelled to talk about their business to feel like they are making progress. When they are in front of the computer, they can’t wait to fast forward to the day when supposedly they can enjoy of the fruits of those countless emails, sleepless nights, and forgone vacations. It’s their choice to live this life, but it’s simply neither the norm nor enjoyable to live like this for an extended period of time.
Along the same line, everybody on the team or board has a different schedule and working preferences and it’s simply impossible to have the entire team in sync. That is okay as long as the areas of responsibilities are communicated and the major timeline is respected. If instead the philosophy is that everybody has to be onboard on every decision, that doesn’t really ensure the best for the business, but simply politics. Politics are the last thing needed for a startup, which is susceptible to mistrust within the team.
The Burning Entrepreneur
Lean Startup
The First 100 Likes
In measuring a startup’s success, demanding results from the right area is far more important than just getting any number within reach. More importantly, the ultimate business goal is to drive traction, growth, and revenue in the long term, which “likes” cannot get, nor do tons of online platforms that get a brand seen everywhere. If anything, the overly spread-out messaging shows lack of focus and desperation, and dilutes traction.
Instead, social media is the place to test the water when resources are limited. It helps uncover the potential audience, and finding out more about this audience allows fine-tuning messages and offerings. Explicit reactions are ideal, but not easy to solicit — it usually takes very odd or extreme situations or opinions to get the customer to respond. Having proper analytics in place can uncover what piques their interest, which can often be revealed by their clicks and further actions.
The Rollercoaster Ride
Chapter 5
Productivity Issues
Life at a startup is a race — not only a race with oneself to push the limits of physical and mental capacity, but also a race with a ton of other startups burgeoning every second in the hopes of being the next big thing. However, productivity is hard to measure by the time unit, and is only tangible at those tipping points where an agglomeration of things starts to make a difference — which aren’t exactly built with sleepless moments filled with code and Red Bull.
Productivity Debated
Everyone Works Differently
It’s hard to look at someone’s working environment and figure out what comes out of it. Some people need to eat and work to produce, while others can’t rest assured until they get something out of their way. Some are very finicky and have to have everything set up exactly the way they want it to be productive, while others don’t spend a moment thinking about anything other than deliverables. While recognizing individual preferred working styles can set the right expectations and foster long-term productivity, it’s also important for entrepreneurs to rethink whether they’re allowing themselves excuses not to make progress by being finicky about the working conditions, and whether they fail to tend to their own needs by being overly single-minded, which may hamper long-term progress.
Brainstorming
While conflicts are the necessary evil to spark innovation, they are a means, not the end. Without a common vision, mutual trust, and shared responsibilities, a startup could fall victim to the endless arguments that delay its foreseeable future indefinitely. Too many resources and too much brain power could be wasted during all those meetings if they turn out to be a stage for territorial debates rather than constructive feedback for the common good.
Collaboration
Today’s working environment stresses collaboration and open communication; therefore, companies are increasingly adopting open-plan offices, while startups are almost always set up this way, only with less space due to the budget constraints. The constant exchange and chatter in the office may be associated with high energy, but the quality time needed for focus and continuity in the thought process is greatly compromised. Moreover, this also poses a disadvantage to those who prefer a quiet working space with greater privacy.
With a single-minded focus on collaboration without paying attention to the actual deliverables, which requires different working styles and personalities, the startup is nothing more than a college dorm full of farces.
Tip:
Check out the book Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, which discusses how today’s society celebrates extroverts that thrive in a collaborative environment but is not designed to tap into the power of introverts who thrive in quiet, private spaces for deep thinking.
The Omni Outlook
Chapter 6
Imbalance
Let’s start with a question — Is air important?
If the answer is yes, then imagine all the other things human beings take for granted: to be able to live, think sensibly, and excel. To live, think clearly, and excel, however, require habits that are sustainable. These include sleeping l
ong enough and at the right time, having healthy eating habits, and taking steps to ensure mental soundness.
Compromising on these things, which are as important as air to sustain normal human beings, may give a short-term boost to a startup’s success by saving a little time, but there will never be enough time to recover from all this wear and tear if the goal is to stay in the game — unless the approach of the individuals involved is strategic and accounts for thinking long-term about how to spend their lives, which no one else can put a valuation on.
Staying Above Water
No matter how positive and energetic entrepreneurs are when starting out on the journey, chances are they’ll end up not recognizing themselves if they don’t draw the line somewhere. Financial stress, the clock that’s constantly ticking towards the launch, and the remoteness from the normal 9-to-5 life most people are still living all put a huge strain on both mental and physical state that may catch them off guard someday.
