Fighterisation of startups
I'd assumed starting up was thinking and doing things differently. However, the deeper I get into it, I'm understanding there is simply a "process" that needs to be followed.
One of my most seminal blogposts ever is the one on "studs and fighters”. While it caused much irritation in certain circles, it has also in some ways come to define me. Here is an excerpt from what I’d written way back in 2007:
Ok so studs are people who have the knack of finding the easy way out. Who have the ability/knack of figuring out the shortest/easiest path. Who have some god-given ability to do things quicker than others, or the ability to get their work done by others, and the like. You get the drift right? They are basically smart people who can do things more easily than others.
Fighters are those who realize that they don’t have the innate studness that studs have. However, they are extremely ambitious and don’t want to be left behind because of the lack of studness. And they try to make up for it by sheer hard work. They regularly burn the midnight oil, cut down on their “other activities” and focus on the task at hand. And by putting maajor fight (as we say in IITese), they make it.
After the spectacular success of this post, I started posting “brand extensions”. Basically I started seeing the concept everywhere. In 2012, I even started writing a book on the topic, but abandoned it when I realised it would be too repetitive. In any case, in 2009, I wrote about the concept of “fighterisation” (back then I preferred American spellings, now I strongly prefer British).
Again excerpting myself:
Now, fighters are not natural when it comes to generating insight. However, they are excellent at following processes. And once an idea has been developed beyond the initial stage, it makes itself amenable to processes. And thus, a set of processes get established. Soon enough, thanks to the processes, the fighters are able to do a much better job of implementing this idea as compared to the pioneering studs, and studs get driven out of the industry.
Startups
There is a LOT of content on my old personal blog (I now blog here) about studs and fighters, if you want to research on that, but today I want to talk about something particular - the process of starting a company seems to have been fighterised.
Basically, there seems to be a template of things to do (and how to do them) in the process of starting up.
Ever since I announced in September / October that I was starting up, I’ve been meeting people who have started before me, or been otherwise in the ecosystem, and they’ve been doling out advice.
And it’s not funny how remarkably consistent some of the advice is. At least six people have asked me if I’ve read “The Mom Test”, for example (I’m now reading it for the second time, which is what triggered this post). From this I learn that there is a “right way” of talking to prospective customers.
At least two others I’ve met have offered to share with me templates on “how to do outbound sales”. There is a right and wrong way to have pricing conversations (though some of my sources have contradicted each other there), to approach venture capitalists, to narrow down your market and all that.
As I go along the starting up process, what I’m finding is that there seems to be a “right way” of doing everything. Right now, we’re in the process of preparing for starting to raise funds (we should hit the market in 2-3 weeks’ time), and as part of that, are preparing answers to a large number of potential questions that VCs might ask us.
There are things that we have done that conform to the “right way” of doing things. There are other things that, thanks to the nature of the product that we’re building, the standard way to do things may not be appropriate for us.
My concern is this - because there appears to be a “right way” of doing things, evaluating whether you have been doing these right things can be a good proxy of how well you are building the company, and thus whether the company will do well in the long run (and thus whether it is fundable now).
From first principles, starting a new company is all about thinking and doing things differently. You are building something new, that hasn’t been built before, and hence supposed to do things that are right for your company, and not what is the standard way of doing things. However, once certain templates get established, it appears there is a real potential penalty to actually doing the right stuff!
It’s basically a vicious cycle - the more the people who do things the same way, the more it becomes the “right way”, and the more any deviations get punished. And there is a real chance that much like the dystopian idea of how “everyone will soon invest in the same index fund”, “every startup will look the same”.
Anyway I’m right now speaking entirely hypothetically. And those of you who know me well know that I’m not one who changes the way I do things only because something is “the right way to do it”. As I’d written earlier, my job is to listen to all your advice, and then decide what is the right thing for the company.
PS: I put this on Twitter yesterday
VC: How is your product a painkiller and not a vitamin?
Me:
Faster than a bullet
Terrifying scream
Enraged and full of anger
[...] half man and half machine