Startups should never grow up
Steve Blank defines a startup as:
“a temporary organisation designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.”
I now believe that a startup should not be a temporary organisation and it should exist forever as an engine of discovery and creation inside the company as it grows.
What do we lose when we ‘discover our business model’?
The beginning of a company is a precious and exciting time.
Everything is potential. We take risks and make leaps to find a model that works and excites our customers. We are happy to take risks because there is very little to lose and bold moves are required to break through the noise.
This atrophies as we discover our playbooks. As we find the repeatable business model — ALWAYS hard won — we want to protect it.
So we become careful, thoughtful, precise.
Here are 5 activities that change in a company as it moves from startup to scaleup.
#1: Customer Discovery
- Startup: Rapid experiments in the field ⇢ lessons learned to team
- Scaleup: Surveys ⇢ analysis ⇢ surveys ⇢ analysis
We lose the direct experience of customers and their problems
#2: Creativity
- Startup: Make something and measure what happens
- Scaleup: Focus groups & agencies
We polish something that worked once and start protecting our brand. Each day we ‘pop’ a little less.
#3: Velocity
- Startup: Do it today
- Scaleup: Integrate into operations
On a small scale we can act immediately. As we grow there are many pieces.
But that means the breakthroughs in the lab are taking years to get to the customer.
#4: Strategy
- Startup: Business model canvas can invert in 1 day
- Scaleup: Incremental tweaks of the model
Incremental not exponential
#5: Team Activity
- Startup: JFDI
- Scaleup: Meeting ⇢ Document Plan ⇢ Working group ⇢ etc
Every day we aren’t learning is a step backwards.
What if startups never ‘matured’ to a scaleup?
What if we sustained the startup and then built the scaleup next to it?
- Run them as autonomous organisations.
- Keep the startup small.
- Small team.
- Small budget.
- No need to ask for permission.
- Currency is learning.
- Risk tolerance is high.
- Scale is low.
- CEO of each.
When new playbooks are discovered, pass them over the fence.
Startups should never grow up.
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I write about my work building deep tech ventures every day on Twitter. I’d ❤️ your follow if you found this useful. Find me as @philmorle
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