Werd I/O

This morning I was asked why I like startups, as opposed to co-operatives or any other kind of organization that builds software or technology. It's a fair question: I'm hardly a free market capitalist (in that I care very much about providing a social safety net and have no interest in small government), and much of my work has been a poor fit for venture capital.

First, some clarifications:

Being a startup and being a co-operative aren't mutually exclusive. The definition of a startup is an organization that is still trying to figure out what it will be - whether that's a Delaware C-Corporation with a board or an anarchist collective is up for grabs. For it to be venture investable, it would probably need to be the C-Corp, because that's what venture capitalists expect; if it's finding sustainability on its own terms, it could be anything.

I'm certainly interested in the mechanics of how an organization that builds technology can find its way to sustainability. Sometimes you can get something off the ground without taking anyone else's money, but there are some ideas that require expensive development, and people come with different financial contexts. Particularly in the US, where commercial necessities like health insurance push the cost of living higher than places like Europe, some investment is often required to give you the time and space to do a project justice. Venture capital is the version of this that has the highest profile in the popular imagination, but it's far from the only way. Revenue-sharing continues to grow in popularity. The Zebra movement is inspiring. And for some mission-driven projects, grants are available. You can have non-profit startups. It's all valid.

So, understanding that startups don't have to be venture funded C-Corporations, why am I into them?

The short answer is: because they're exciting.

I'm not excited by the financial fundamentals of the venture treadmill (make your stock progressively worth more so that people who bought in earlier can make a profit). I'm also not excited by building something to get rich. But like I said, that's not actually core to the definition of a startup, and there's something fundamentally appealing about people coming together to figure out the nature of the problem they're trying to solve, and then finding creative ways to solve it, all the while testing to see if they've got it right.

In the same vein, I'm not excited by coding for its own sake. I'm just not. I'm excited about solving human problems with technology, scrappily, with a mixture of every interdisciplinary skillset you can bring to bear. For me, technology is only really interesting when it finds its way into someone's hands, and the core mission of a true startup is to make something as useful as possible while also ensuring you can keep making it.

If I can work on that kind of mission full time? Make it not just a hobby, but a full-time job where I get to make something that I devised that becomes useful to more and more people? That sounds like heaven to me.

It's not about hockey-stick growth. It's not about finding an exit. It's not about being a financial vehicle. It's about building something meaningful, using all the skill and creativity you can muster, and getting to keep doing it. That's why I like startups.

#startups

One often-seen trope in tech industry commentary is: "the geeks will inherit the earth".

It's a nice idea, which appeals to a lot of people in this ecosystem; there's even a lovely symmetry to the idea that the people who were probably bullied and ostracized in school, at least to some extent, are the same people who go on to change the world in meaningful ways. And in a lot of ways, it's true.

It's not because geeks are in any way better, or more intelligent, people. Instead, my theory is that it relates to being an outsider. People who don't change themselves to fit in are, almost by definition, more likely to think independently. If an effective leader is one who creates stand-out strategies and is able to creatively and intelligently react to circumstances, it makes sense that independent thinkers would fit the role more readily. The popular kids at school are much more suited to be followers - they've essentially taught themselves how to follow fashions rather than create them.

MBAs are not traditionally good at startups for similar reasons. They've been taught cookie cutter business methods, which make much more sense as management tactics in larger businesses than in the do-what-you-have-to context of getting something off the ground. Here in San Francisco, arguably tech startup central, besuited MBAs are often thought of as not bringing much to the table.

But geeks have their own popular kids now. Startup culture has created its own norms; brogrammers swarm San Francisco and cities like it, following the fashions dictated by outlets like TechCrunch and PandoDaily. Not a single one is likely to change the marketplace, let alone the world - and with them comes a pervasive culture of entitlement and even bigotry that isn't a million miles away from the cool kids.

Outliers are always going to be the people who bring about real change: people who can't easily be described, and whose actions can't easily be pattern-matched to an archetype. Often, these are people who don't take direction well. They might come across as weird, or antisocial. But their ideas are like nothing you've ever heard, and given the tools, they will create things you've never thought of.

Someone once said to me, in reference to someone who they thought was weird, "one way of looking at it is that they don't think mainstream culture is good enough for them." Damn straight. Being mainstream shouldn't be good enough for any of us. There's nothing to be gained by trying to be like everybody else, or by fitting yourself into a pre-defined pigeonhole.

Me? I like weird people, and I like working with them. I wish I was weirder myself: it's a sign of creativity, independence, and intelligence. San Francisco has a name for people who follow; they're called "normals" - or, sometimes, "consumers". It's not a label to aspire to.

In fact, none of us need to be normals or consumers. Once upon a time, we were needfully forced into demographic categories, so that products and media could be created that would broadly appeal to us. The Internet has created a world where anyone can connect to anyone else, whether it's to talk, to inform, or to sell. Fashions of all kinds are meaningless in a world where products can be viably created for an audience of one. They're an artifact of the age of broadcasting; one that's long since gone. We're in a post-demographic age, and if you're still trying to follow the crowd, you're a decade behind.

#startups #outliers