nature as the market
Nature is a bitch. Yes, it is beautiful and powerful; it hosts and embraces species of all kinds but before that, the weak must die. Nature, as we know, prefers the fittest individuals and strongest communities of animals, who are the ones that are allowed to live and perdure over time. This is, of course, because species evolve and adapt, they carry the properties that give them an advantage over generations, or look for places where they already have an advantage. After all, it is just natural selection. People who live in the wilderness are not an exception to this rule. They cannot change the place where they choose to live, but they can build their life around what works: their clothes, their food, their shelter. All of these variables matter, and if any of these are off, Nature will expel them. “I cannot make it not snow or rain,” comments Christopher about the southern-Andean weather. Christopher has a piece of land 900 km to the south of the Chilean capital, deep in the mountains, where he has lived his entire life. There, the weather is just brutal – “If there is a 2 meter snowfall overnight, you still need to do everything you did yesterday”.And just as Nature is a bitch, so is the Market. The Market will only keep companies and startups that, just as species, evolve and change with the market, take advantage of what they have, or aggressively pivot to find an advantage – the Market keeps whoever can adapt, and if they can’t, they die (figuratively in this case, fortunately). At the same time, just as people living in nature, startups cannot choose how the Market looks, or how it reacts, or how it changes, and if there is a crisis, or a catastrophic Market event, they still need to do everything they did yesterday… or else.
easy trumps simple
Most people will tell that those who live in the wild live a simple life. Who has read my previous blog entry, where I rant about the difference between easy and simple, can tell that, in my opinion, this is not true. People in the wild live easy, they do not need the optimum way to go through their day, and they don’t spend too much time thinking about how to solve a problem; they only need to solve it and go through it, no matter what. The best way to do this is the easy way, whatever takes the least amount of energy and resources. For example, people living in the mountains where it is extremely cold in the winter, will prefer to open the windows, allowing freezing cold wind to go in if it is too hot inside, rather than putting down the fire that keeps them warm. Of course, this could be considered a waste of resources, but the real waste would be letting the fire out in freezing temperatures outside. “It takes hours for the stove to reach its temperature,” says John, who lives in the middle of the mountains, when I asked why he would rather open the door to let fresh air come in when it was in fact too hot inside. “Don’t even get me started on all the wood I need to make it hot at all”.Startups must do things in the easiest way possible, with as few resources as possible. This allows for fast development, changes, and improvements over the first iterations of a product. This is not only true for money, but most importantly about people. Small teams are more efficient than large ones, letting one single person have control over many different aspects of a product, which allows for changes to be quick and frictionless – no need to ask someone else to change something because you changed something… You just do it. At the same time, smaller teams make faster decisions, though not necessarily better, the startup environment prizes speed over quality, because even if you messed up the first and the second time, the third time will be right, and all the time spent on those three iterations, will still be faster than a large team deciding on the best option.
If it works, don’t break it
Furthermore, do not even touch it. Making any kind of change to something that works is strictly prohibited if you live in the wilderness - there is quite literally no reason to change something that has an objective and accomplishes it. Christopher has a guest house with hot water (an outstanding luxury where he lives), but the hot water knob is actually the cold one, and vice versa. This is obviously not a prank; it was just an honest mistake he made when he built the guest house. I asked him why he didn’t bother to change it: “It works…” he responded, amused. I just couldn’t push back.In a startup, if you have a product that works, why would you change it? Change itself does not make any sense, even if the product has errors and bugs. Change must come from a necessity of change: users asking for features, competition having a better product, so on. But there are several cases where unique, niche products or just very specific functionalities may say the same for decades at a time. I see many young engineers making the mistake of wanting to optimize a code function or refactor a code module when these already work. Just don’t.
The Struggle culture
People in the wild are wiser than us. Yes, they work really hard at times, putting all all-nighters if needed, waking up at 2 am so they can reach all their herd by 8 am, working 16 hours a day of physical work because the weather is allowing it, and so on. Yes, the struggle. But many other times, they chill. They sit and contemplate, they wait, they rest. There are better moments to perform a task, and they know when that is.Yes, startups are hard and yes, there is struggle. But struggle is (or should at least be) a temporary state, not a permanent adjective of what a startup is. There are stressful periods where you lose clients, your product bombs, you lose an investor, or part of your team quits. But these should be circumstances, not the norm. I say this because it appears to me that there are some try-hard “entrepreneurs” who believe that struggle is all there is, and nothing else, that they need people who go and sacrifice everything for the company because it is “what the business needs from them”. More than once, I’ve read “entrepreneurs” comparing their startup as Ernest Shackleton’s job advert: basically torture. If the above resonates with your workplace, run.
Startups should learn to wait, to do the job when is best, and not suffer because you have to struggle, that is just a nonsensical culture people (sociopaths) build. Be wiser.
exponential growth
There is a myth in the market that says who does not grow, dies. That is factually a lie, as there is literally no evidence for this. In my opinion, this saying should be replaced by you grow because you have a good product, people like it, and are willing to pay for it, but it is probably too boring and not inspirational enough for startup gurus. But yes, the nature of startups, by definition, involves a rapid, exponential growth in a short period of time, with the purpose of exponential and fast returns for investors. There is obviously nothing inherently working with this, actually, I think it is great. The problem, and something that is evident in the wilderness, is that growth should be organic, as the saying I propose entails. If you have a great product, you will grow rapidly and sustainably. On the contrary, startups tend to grow in an unsustainable way on purpose, burning money faster than my dog eats shrimp (my dog does not eat shrimp, and I don’t have a dog, but you get the point). Startups should aim to grow, absolutely, but they should focus on natural and organic growth. Hiring another engineer or data scientist won’t make your product better, and hiring a marketing team won’t sell your product all the way to NASDAQ.“Sometimes I have ten people working for me for three months straight, but most of the year its just me” Christopher comments. He may get dozens of clients a day during high season, but when demand falls, there may be no demand at all. Living in the wild make you adapt quickly to the demand, and only grow if you really need to. If you get clients consistently and sustainably, you get people, if not, well… you don’t.
Startups should focus on work-to-be-done needs when hiring. This is asking, “Is there important work to be done that current employees cannot reasonably perform?” If the answer to that is yes only then you hire.