While each startup has its own culture, there is also an overarching startup culture. Founders who launch their own ventures inevitably find themselves falling down this rabbit hole, despite their best intentions.
Some caricature startup culture is hustle porn, but it’s much deeper and more multifaceted than simply glorifying the grind. I would like to single out some of the pillars of startup culture so that founders can focus more on business activities that actually move the needle.
Conflating pitching with business-building
Pitching is an essential part of any startup. Founders must pitch potential employees, users, customers, investors, and in more regulated spaces, government stakeholders. Because pitching is a fundamental part of founder work, they often conflate pitching competitions with actually conducting business.
Make no mistake: Pitching competitions are not venture-building, even if the judges may be investors or there are monetary prizes at stake. Pitching competitions are artificial constructions — that’s why many of them have a theme (i.e. such as only startups from a certain industry or that use a particular technology) that act as constraints that do not occur in the real world. To wit, most investors do not limit what pitches they receive by vertical or technology – they only care about the best businesses, period.
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Pitch competitions may indeed be exhilarating, but they are distinct endeavours from building a scaleable and successful business.
Selling cultures that only exist on paper
Every founder has an idealised version of their product or service — what it would look like if they had infinite resources in time, money, and manpower. In much the same way, founders also have idealised versions of their own culture.
When recruiting early employees and even other co-founders, founders tend to sell this idealised version of their own culture, which may be far different from what is happening on the ground. For example, one founder might preach about a flat structure, when, in reality, the company is micromanaged through him. Another might harp on team-buildings and outings that rarely happen in between the grind of building their business.
Although some amount of salesmanship may always be necessary, founders should not recruit employees based on an organisational culture that is a far cry from reality.
Expecting the same commitment from early employees
Founders have much larger skin in the game. Even if they have already raised some angel funding or funds from friends and family, they still own a disproportionate amount of equity. As a result, they put extreme amounts of dedication into building the company, knowing that in the event of a liquidity event — such as a buyout from a larger firm — they would profit handsomely.
There is no inherent problem with this structure. Problems only start to occur when founders expect the same unwavering commitment, loyalty, and drive from early employees, even when their rewards are on a different scale. Many early employees may have stock options, but unless your company becomes Google, these will typically not amount to much of anything: Some may have an even better chance of making money by rolling dice at a crap table.
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Because there is this mismatch, founders need to have more grace when evaluating early employees: These talents should not be held to the same standards that they hold themselves.
Drowning out the noise
All of these problems are symptomatic of a larger trend: Founders — like many in this generation — are focused on fanfare and clout. They pitch in competitions to win prizes and get featured in tech publications. They promote a culture that doesn’t exist to make themselves feel good to both potential and current employees. They drive their employees to work endlessly hard because that’s what gets the pat on the back.
Founders, in short, are often much more focused on building their personal brand than their business. The root problem here is often fear. It’s easier to get likes on Facebook, talk about what separates our startups from others, and crack the whip on employees than it is to answer much tougher questions.
Do we have a compelling minimum viable product? Have we found product-market fit? Do we have the expertise necessary to capture the market before competitors? These questions are considerably tougher because they require introspection, and dare I say, soul-searching, but they are essential if we want to restore course why we began our startup in the first place: To build something great.
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The article was first published on June 24, 2024
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