On Startup Rules

I’ve been following with interest the controversy surrounding Jason Calcanis’s post How to save money running a startup. I’m not sure why people get so huffy about these things, but in any case there’s not a word in his post I don’t agree with.

But there’s a missing ingredient here: leadership. Because there’s a name for a place where people work 24/7 without coffee or lunch breaks, optimize their workspaces so they can multi-task and be more productive while working, then take their work home with them, and continue this ad nauseum. It’s called a grind. No matter how passionate people are about the company, eventually they will run out of gas.

Successful leaders of small teams, in a startup or otherwise, are able to create both a vision for the long-term and a sense of urgency around reaching each of the many serial interim milestones. And, equally importantly, to find ways to celebrate and blow off steam between sprints.

Whether it’s bottles of wine that double in size for different user-number goals and are then drunk and signed by the team, outings tied to revenue goals, or just good old-fashioned partying after the big release (all of which I’ve used or seen work), how you infect other people with your passion and drive is probably even more important than creating the conditions that optimize for them.