Zachary Aldwin Milkshake in the Boardroom
They feed the lifeblood of entrepreneurs and carry with them measures of risk and reward that have anyone involved in one on a permanent adrenaline high. At some point you are probably going to stop being a start-up. There is no fixed definition on this, just as there is no fixed definition on what
constitutes a start-up.
That makes it pretty hard to turn around and go “well guys that’s it we are no longer a start-up, we can take the training wheels off the bike now”. As you will see, that is not necessarily a bad thing.
A start-up is a fledging organisation working to solve a problem in a new and innovative way, with no guarantee of success. They usually require external injections of capital and funding to finance the process of moving from plan to prototype to fully fledged production, marketing and, if all goes well, sales.
They are characterised by low numbers of staff (usually the founders) filling multiple roles that will eventually be taken on by employees.
There is a high, creative energy level, rapid iteration, extreme emotions, and flexibility of timetable (if the only two workers decide that their next meeting needs to take place over a cup of coffee at 3pm then they can just up and go).
Like I said before, there is no standard point where a start-up grows up. Here are a few indicators though.
You no longer need capital injections to pay the bills because your income causes you to break even. You employ a larger number of people (say over a hundred) and have an operations handbook that governs their behaviour.
You have solved the problem you were working on and have a large buy in from people who need your unique solution. You go through an IPO. The founders sell. You expanded into a different country. You made a million dollars.
Your product enters the dictionary as a word. Time passes and you feel that after five years you just cannot be called a start-up any longer.
As you expand the traits that make a start-up unique begin to be replaced by other more mundane ones. It is easy to slip into a traditional corporate mindset that controls and governs behaviour.
A degree of rigidity and discipline creeps in. If you are an entrepreneur this shift can make life a little dull as the excitement fades and you go into adrenaline withdrawal.
My challenge to you is to find a way to hang on to some of those start-up traits in the same way that a child who is filled with wonder at the things around him should never lose that sense of amazement and discovery as an adult.
First up is flexibility. It has been said that it is harder to turn an aircraft carrier around than it is to turn a speedboat. Growing numbers of employees mean that certain limits and controls need to be put in place. Turnover in staff means training programs and operations manuals.
Production means Health and Safety procedures need to be in place. So much bureaucratic drama! It becomes harder to change plans. Small groups can work well to overcome this. Getting bigger does not mean that change never happens, it just needs to be managed a bit better.
Creativity needs to be fostered no matter how big you are. In large organisations it is easy for ideas to be stifled in a myriad of meetings. Clear and simple methods of ensuring that great ideas get acted on can be put into that nasty large operations manual you are growing.
Holding brainstorming meetings or creativity sessions regularly, doing activities that break the rut of usual business are some options.
Frugality is something we all should have learnt by now. Start-ups are lean (or should be). If you are taking your first Venture Capital cheque and blowing it on a new Mercedes to “bolster your image” you should rethink your strategy and perhaps your way of living.
Practising financial wisdom means that when economic downturns happen you are better able to survive. Finally keep the fun.
Despite the pressures start-ups can be a fun place. The lack of formality and high energy naturally encourages it. Something often shifts once suits and uniforms become the order of the day.
If you and your staff are not able to enjoy what they do and have a good laugh once in a while then a healthy injection of fun may be the only solution.
As your business grows up and you ditch the equivalent of diapers, bottles and reliance on others for your needs and begin to take more responsibility remember that while the game and rules may have changed you can still be at play. Being a start-up perhaps is, after all, more a state of mind than anything else.
- E-mail: boardmilkshake@gmail.com