the startup character — and enterprise persona.
Beyond the Passion Project — Every startup story celebrates the founder’s burning passion: the itch to fix a problem, the fascination with a niché, the obsession with a disruptive idea. But there’s another often under-discussed story of pure love for building companies.
Startup has multiple characters.
Startup OGs: Walking Wikis –
The OG crew at startups — the first believers who jumped in before it was cool — are like walking Wikis. They’ve got the product knowledge down pat, not just features, but all the hidden bugs and past mistakes (the skeletons in the closet). This historical context is gold, making them the go-to for any question about the product’s past.
But here’s the rub– OGs might be pioneers, but that doesn’t guarantee they’re ready for the next stage. Scaling a scrappy startup into a well-oiled machine requires a different skillset. So when new hires swoop in to take the reins on leadership and strategy, it can leave OGs scratching their heads. They wonder, “Hey, I was here from day one, shouldn’t I be leading the charge?”
Nearly every entrepreneurial origin story you hear is about someone with such a strong passion for something that they couldn’t help but manifest it into existence. Usually it’s a passion for solving a particularly troubling human problem or a deep curiosity for exploring a given subject or an unyielding obsession with a futuristic idea. But what we don’t talk enough about is a deep love of the game of building “enterprises” itself.
The new dawg and the veterans.
The way I see it, there are two types of people. There are those in it for the love of the mission that they’re obsessed with championing. And there are those in it for the love of the game of entrepreneurship itself, almost irrespective of the mission of the business.
“Sometimes the mission is the business and sometimes the business is the mission.”
When I started my career I was a part of a daily scrum. There was a lot of work that needed to be done very quickly. Spending time across scrum teams, but also thinking about strategy, We realised the single most impactful and time saving thing we could do was to “stop designing for our users and align on where we wanted the product to be in the future.”
This is where we need the true collaboration to happen between the new dwag and veterans, every time the new features / issues are discussed the veteran finds it very hard to accept the changes but building something valuable is no longer about validating a novel idea as fast as possible. Instead, the modern MVP exercise is about building a version of an idea that is different from and better than what exists today. Most of us aren’t building for a net-new market. Rather, we’re finding opportunities to improve existing categories. We need an MVP concept that helps founders and product leaders iterate on their early ideas to compete in an existing market.
When we see the veteran trying to push back on the new ideas that are being shared by new dwag. This means we’re having the oil & water problem —
Oil & Water problem —
Oil and water don’t mix because they have different molecular structures and polarities. This difference in polarity prevents them from forming stable mixtures, causing them to separate into distinct layers. Oil and water are the metaphor for startups rapidly growing when one polarity mixes with another.
The Coach & The Players:
There are two main types of entrepreneurs– those driven by a mission and those who love the game itself. The game is entrepreneurship — with some mix of building a business, creating something from nothing, “winning” against a field of competitors, capturing the world’s attention, making a lot of money, and rising to the top of the entrepreneurial respect ladder, To a large extent, they could get excited about any idea, so long as the game around it is compelling.
The key is self-awareness. Are you a missionary, needing a burning purpose to stay hot? Or a player, who can get fired up by any fast-paced venture?
Coaches are fanatics, They have a problem they’re obsessed with solving or an idea they must bring to life. Work becomes an extension of their vision, and everything else is a distraction. They’re driven by a view of the world they want to turn into reality.
Players dig the startup hustle, Building a company, the competition, the potential for massive wins (financial or fame) — that’s their fuel. They’re flexible on the exact mission, as long as the game is exciting. Think Richard Branson — always chasing the next big challenge.
Some coaches might evolve into players, perhaps after getting hooked on the startup game through a particularly inspiring mission. The important part is to find what fuels your fire — the mission itself or the thrill of the ride.
TBH i’ve been experiencing both the side — over the stretch and the best thing about the transition is “The Butterfly Effect — Personal Cycles of Transformation and Rebirth.” To be abundantly clear, integrating the two cultures isn’t about making everyone happy as that’s not alignment, it’s more about what is best for the game.
As Larry David once said, “A good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied.”
The goal is constantly having input and continued improvement in blending the best of both worlds together — to successfully transition for the startup character and build a enterprise persona.
