Being Crazy

I was recently called crazy by someone on my team. In public. On LinkedIn.

I loved it.

OK, he actually called me "a little crazy", not ???? crazy, so perhaps that made it sound better. In case you're wondering what prompted this particular indictment (not the first and definitely not the last), scroll to the bottom for more details. However, this got me thinking about when "being crazy" is actually a feature, not a bug. Especially when it comes to innovation and startups.

Not all new companies are startups, and not all startups are innovative, but when most people think of a startup, they think of a wildly innovative company with massive growth potential. The cliche is that they are out to "change the world".

But where does innovation come from? Or, more generally, where does differentiation come from? It comes from taking risks and being, well, different. Now, that's a word that can sometimes be a euphemism for someone who doesn't conform to normal behavior, who is a bit eccentric or just a little crazy.

In order to be a successful startup founder, it's necessary to break with the norm, be slightly irrational and selectively ignore reality.

I realize that this may be a somewhat controversial statement. It certainly doesn't apply to every startup founder, but I'd argue that the best ones share those traits. Let me address each of them in turn:

• break with the norm -- how many young founders have had a hard time explaining to their parents, who expected them to go work for a BigTech company, why they just had to leave the hamster wheel behind to start their own company, so they could code all day in their underwear in an apartment stacked with empty pizza boxes and ramen containers?
• be slightly irrational -- from a purely economic sense, being a startup founder makes no sense: the expected value (the average of all the possible payouts multiplied by their probability) of starting a company and sticking with it for 5-10 years is usually much lower than working during the same period at an established company, even in a non-executive role.
• selectively ignore reality -- the very notion of founders dreaming about having a global impact and changing consumer behavior when they're just three people talking at a coffee shop is pretty disjointed from (the current) reality and they have to put aside the overwhelming evidence that a ridiculously high number of startups fail.

This is not to say that founders are stupid. (Ok, I'm sure that some of them are, but I've talked to a lot of founders and most are driven, intelligent and smart.) They're just "a little crazy".

And that's a good thing, because otherwise they would be doing what everyone else is already doing -- and there's clearly no differentiation in that. Perhaps a more specific word to use here would be "contrarian", which requires going against the prevailing common sense. And if you're successful, someone may call you a "visionary".

To be honest I've done my share of both crazy and stupid things, and many have not paid off, so when somebody I respect says that one of these ideas, and the execution that came after that, "has quickly become one of the coolest things I've been a part of in my career", I call it a huge win.

However, there's a positive and a destructive way of "being crazy" as a founder. Here are a few tips:

• talk your team through the thought process -- even if there's a bit of a contrarian or non-intuitive leap, the rest should be anchored in reality, including understanding the execution, impact and metrics.
• right-size the crazy -- starting with a small experiment means that it won't kill the company if it doesn't work; however, you need to make a sufficiently large commitment (in time, money, attention) to give it a chance of success.
• terminate with extreme prejudice if it doesn't work -- the sooner you can figure out if you just went from crazy to stupid, the more opportunities you will have to try something new before time runs out.

As an example, the LinkedIn post that called me crazy was motivated by the opening of the InOrbit Robot Space in the heart of Silicon Valley as a combination product showcase / empathy lab / executive briefing center / community space / retail store to help demistify robots.

Let's just say that when I first mentioned this concept, it was met with a significant amount of skepticism. Can we afford it? How will we staff it? Where will we get our robots from? Why not rent a warehouse? Why would we ever open this to random people off the street who are not our customers? All valid questions, but I had the vision of what it could become and the conviction that we could make it happen.

In just 6 months, we've hosted a huge launch event with the who's who of robotics in Silicon Valley; delivered +100 interactive customer demos with multiple robots interacting in a shared space; turned a tiny booth at a trade show into a 1,000 sq.ft. demo for a fraction of the cost; gave and facilitated presentations about robot orchestration; supported groups from Women in Robotics, Silicon Valley Robotics, CMU, UC Berkeley, and various non-profits; and opened to the public so children and adults can learn about modern robotics.

In this case, crazy has clearly paid off. But it won't always, otherwise everyone would be doing it ... which would defeat the purpose.

Ultimately, the difference between crazy, stupid and visionary can only be assessed in hindsight. As a founder, you should be OK with the fact that each of these outcomes is equally likely.