How To Build Your Future
EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next
Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a
social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.
Of course, it’s easier to copy a model than to make something new. Doing what we already know
how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create
something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and
the result is something fresh and strange.
Technology is miraculous because it allows us to do more with less, ratcheting up our fundamental
capabilities to a higher level. Other animals are instinctively driven to build things like dams or
honeycombs, but we are the only that can invent new things and better ways of making them.
Humans don’t decide what to build by making choices from some cosmic catalog of options given in
advance; instead, by creating new technologies, we rewrite the plan of the world. These are the kind
of elementary truths we teach to second graders, but they are easy to forget in a world where so much
of what we do is repeat what has been done before.
Image Source: https://billsnest.net/2017/06/03/business-start-up-1-2-3/
New technology tends to come from new ventures—startups. From the Founding Fathers in politics to
the Royal Society in science to Fairchild Semiconductor’s “traitorous eight” in business, small
groups of people bound together by a sense of mission have changed the world for the better. The
easiest explanation for this is negative: it’s hard to develop new things in big organizations, and it’s
even harder to do it by yourself. Bureaucratic hierarchies move slowly, and entrenched interests shy
away from risk. In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a
better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you
should quit now). At the other extreme, a lone genius might create a classic work of art or literature,
but he could never create an entire industry. Startups operate on the principle that you need to work
with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can.
Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a
different future. A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than
nimbleness, small size affords space to think. This book is about the questions you must ask and
answer to succeed in the business of doing new things: what follows is not a manual or a record of
knowledge but an exercise in thinking. Because that is what a startup has to do: question received
ideas and rethink business from scratch.
- Make incremental advances
Grand visions inflated the bubble, so they should not be indulged. Anyone who claims to be able
to do something great is suspect, and anyone who wants to change the world should be more
humble. Small, incremental steps are the only safe path forward. - Stay lean and flexible
All companies must be “lean,” which is code for “unplanned.” You should not know what your
business will do; planning is arrogant and inflexible. Instead you should try things out, “iterate,”
and treat entrepreneurship as agnostic experimentation. - Improve on the competition
Don’t try to create a new market prematurely. The only way to know you have a real business is
to start with an already existing customer, so you should build your company by improving on
recognizable products already offered by successful competitors. - Focus on product, not sales
If your product requires advertising or salespeople to sell it, it’s not good enough: technology is
primarily about product development, not distribution. Bubble-era advertising was obviously
wasteful, so the only sustainable growth is viral growth.
These lessons have become dogma in the startup world; those who would ignore them are
presumed to invite the justified doom visited upon technology in the great crash of 2000. And yet the
opposite principles are probably more correct: - It is better to risk boldness than triviality.
- A bad plan is better than no plan.
- Competitive markets destroy profits.
- Sales matters just as much as product.
Ruthless People
The problem with a competitive business goes beyond lack of profits. Imagine you’re running one of
those restaurants in Mountain View. You’re not that different from dozens of your competitors, so
you’ve got to fight hard to survive. If you offer affordable food with low margins, you can probably
pay employees only minimum wage. And you’ll need to squeeze out every efficiency: that’s why
small restaurants put Grandma to work at the register and make the kids wash dishes in the back.
Restaurants aren’t much better even at the very highest rungs, where reviews and ratings like
Michelin’s star system enforce a culture of intense competition that can drive chefs crazy. (French
chef and winner of three Michelin stars Bernard Loiseau was quoted as saying, “If I lose a star, I will
commit suicide.” Michelin maintained his rating, but Loiseau killed himself anyway in 2003 when a
competing French dining guide downgraded his restaurant.) The competitive ecosystem pushes people
toward ruthlessness or death.
A monopoly like Google is different. Since it doesn’t have to worry about competing with anyone,
it has wider latitude to care about its workers, its products, and its impact on the wider world.
Google’s motto—“Don’t be evil”—is in part a branding ploy, but it’s also characteristic of a kind of
business that’s successful enough to take ethics seriously without jeopardizing its own existence. In
business, money is either an important thing or it is everything. Monopolists can afford to think
about things other than making money; non-monopolists can’t. In perfect competition, a business is so
focused on today’s margins that it can’t possibly plan for a long-term future. Only one thing can allow
a business to transcend the daily brute struggle for survival: monopoly profits.
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