What’s so great about a start-up?
Posted on | November 25, 2011
I’m not kidding. Who cares?
It’s a topic that keeps cropping up in my circle of friends/business acquaintances.
Startups, startups, startups.
It’s an obsession with some people. I’ve noticed it a lot recently. There are startup programmes at all the universities. There are incubators. There is funding to do it. There is support. There is a whole legion of people in Scotland who are obsessed with the notion that startups are the thing to focus on. The only thing to focus on. The holy grail of business.
(seriously, if you listen to some people you’d swear that startups can simultaneously cure AIDS, end poverty, make David Cameron less of a shitty prime minister…the list goes on).
I’m not buying it. Startups mean nothing to me. Sustainable businesses, on the other hand, do.
Look, starting up a business is easy. You can do it in about five minutes. All it takes is a credit card and a name. You register it at Companies House and BAM – you’re a director. There is nothing special in that. There is nothing holy or impressive.
Now building a business – that’s hard. I know from first hand experience. There are sleepless nights, hard choices and a lot of ups and downs.
But I think it’s deeper than that. It’s also about the kind of business you want to build.
When I started Designate, an exit strategy never occurred to me. Nor did a fall back plan. I was determined to build a business.
I was also determined to build my business. The business I wanted to work in. The business that could be a great company, with great people and great services. I wanted to build the best team. I wanted to make the best environment. And yes, I wanted to make the best money as well. Work hard, play hard – you know how it all goes.
But the majority of startups I see nowadays don’t seem to focus on that.
It’s a quick in and a quick out. We’ll build this up and sell it on in five years. We have an exit strategy.
What are you focussed on if that’s the case? Are you trying build a business or are you trying to follow a business plan? Are you trying to make the best products/services or are you just trying to get to the end?
I know that some of this is driven by the investment community we have in the UK. There is a huge focus on quick exits. In and out. We need an exit return after three years. Or maybe five. And I understand that investors need to be able to make their money and their profits. It’s how the whole thing works. But how much are building a false economy here?
What’s the shame of having a sustainable business that grows over twenty years? Or thirty? Have our businesses really gone the way of our construction industry – we build them cheap and they last a short period of time. Is this really the business world we want to create?
I’d like to see us focus a little less on startups and more on building lasting companies that grow. I’d like to see us concentrate less on the short term win and more on the long-term growth. I’d like to see less incubators promising “FREE FREE FREE”, and more support for growing and building a business.
As I said at the beginning: Startups mean nothing to me. Sustainable businesses, on the other hand, do. And I think we need to concentrate more on building great companies than on obsessively starting up companies doomed to fail.
- J
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