Modern-Day Gladiators: Diving With Sharks and Fighting With Lions in the Startup Arena

Great spectacle. But is this the way to sustainable success?

Who will be thrown into the “Shark Tank” or “Lions’ Den”?(H?hle der L?wen, German Startup TV Show)?of investors in one of the startup TV spectacles this week? Will they survive the adventure with scratches and bruises or give up their ambitious ideas forever?

Who needs gladiators when there are brave startup founders willing to take on pitch battles in front of investors on public television.

Instead of bread and games, entertainment TV offers investor money and startup ideas to excite the public. The pitching of innovative and courageous ideas by aspiring entrepreneurs has become a kind of modern circus spectacle on private broadcasting.?

Those for whom it is less funny are the gladiators, the inventors and founders, whose ideas are often scathingly judged by the jury and brutally crushed on the ground. At the end, they await a thumbs up or thumbs down, just like the gladiators in ancient Rome whose life or death was determined by this small gesture from the emperor.

All of this appears very rushed. “Faster! Newer! More disruptive! Give us more! Smash them to the ground”, the crowd seems to scream behind their TV sets. The masses crave a spectacle, and they get it, while the startup founders are wrestling not only with the investors, but also with the elusive “Next Big Thing” they supposedly have in mind.

But is that the path to success? What defines real, sustainable success for technology startups? There is certainly no one-size-fits-all recipe for this, but please find a few useful ingredients below.

Solving Problems, Fulfilling Wishes - Technology at the Service of People

As long as there are problems to solve and wishes to fulfill, there are also new business ideas to be realized. Seen in this light, a business opportunity exists behind almost every problem encountered in everyday life. Technology is definitely a useful tool in this context. But it’s a tool that is only as beautiful or as ugly as its application - or its user.

In any case, the important thing is that technology serves people, not the other way around. Great gadgets make our lives easier and more enjoyable. However, if we allow ourselves to be enslaved by these gadgets and depend on constant "connectedness," it becomes less positive.?

But it is people who decide how to apply technology. Successful startup ideas should be useful, enriching, and contribute to people's awareness, growth, and empowerment rather than control, hinder or harm them.

The Most Abstruse Ideas Might be the Best

Those who are only chasing the next "Big Thing" can easily overlook unusual ideas. Yet, the most successful companies often emerge from downright abstruse suggestions. For example, who would have thought that an online platform for air mattress rentals would become a billion-dollar business like Airbnb?

The added value of great inventions is often not immediately apparent to others. As Henry Ford once aptly put it,?“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Founders' Spirit and the Greed for the Million-Dollar Exit

"Products are interchangeable, founders are not,"?explains one of the investors of the German TV startup show “The Lions’ Den”?(Die H?hle der L?wen).?So, it takes founders' spirit – the right spirit. But what constitutes this spirit?

Anyone who founds a startup solely with the hope of an exit worth millions or even billions is out of place from the start. Money follows visions and real added value, not the greed for quick riches.

Entrepreneurship is an adventure best approached with curiosity, enthusiasm, and a lot of perseverance. And, of course, with great openness and flexibility because everything will almost certainly turn out completely differently than you think.

Please Don’t Say You Are the Next Uber or Airbnb in Your Industry

"They're not going to win by trying to be the new Uber or the new Airbnb,"?Renée Mauborgne, author of the best-seller "Blue Ocean Strategy," clarifies in an interview.

It takes people with courage to do things their own unique way rather than imitate, as there are already more than enough imitations running around, even in the startup world.

Authenticity, on the other hand, is the realm from which truly new things emerge. And it is this very authenticity that distinguishes us as humans from robots. When it comes to monotonous tasks, precision work, and data storage capacity, robots outperform us by far. But they are linear thinkers. And creative new ideas do not come from linear thinking.

Taming the Tiger Called Disruption

Since Joseph Schumpeter's postulate of the "creative power of destruction," this idea has inspired people in the technology world as well as in business. But do emerging businesses necessarily always have to be based on disruption? Do we always have to destroy to create something new? Not necessarily.

In fact, if we only focus on disruption, we overlook many other opportunities. Innovations can also be non-disruptive; that doesn't make them any less valuable. For example, old problems can be solved in a completely new way, or existing resources can be recombined. You don't always have to completely reinvent the wheel.

Business Model Revolution

Oftentimes, the disruption is not in technology but in new business models. Platforms like Airbnb, Uber, Alibaba, Etsy, etc., have turned entire industries - hotels, cab transport, retail - upside down with their different business models. Did they develop any major technological innovation to go with it? No. Online platforms and apps are a dime a dozen.

What's new here is not the technology, but the change in the customer relationship. Customers themselves are becoming producers, sellers, and service providers. And a new, impressively simple use of technology is helping them to do so.

Courage to Fail and the "Crab Mentality" of Our Society

"You never fail unless you give up trying"?is a nice quote attributed to Albert Einstein, and there are indeed countries and cultures that embrace a healthy culture of failure. It is normal to make mistakes along the way because?"ahead is where no one knows their way around yet"?(Stefan Raab), and as Albert Einstein put it,?"anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."

In Austria and Germany, it's not quite so simple. In these countries the so-called "crab mentality" is widespread: when catching crabs, fishermen do not have to cover the catching basket because every crab that courageously sticks its head out of the basket is immediately pulled down again by the others.?

Giving others credit for success is not very common in this mentality.?

Obstacles emerge when a single crab ventures into uncharted waters - thrown at you by authorities, fellow campaigners, friends, acquaintances, and even strangers who suddenly feel called upon to offer unsolicited "constructive criticism".?

But anyone who is put off by this has missed the point of the adventure.?

Success is a Journey, Not a Destination. Hit the Road and Try to Enjoy the Bumpy Ride.

The entrepreneurship-adventure is not a destination; it is a journey. And those who take each step on this road with the right intention, enthusiasm, and perseverance will always succeed in the end.?

Because success does not lie in a distant future, but in the passion and curiosity with which we approach everything in the here and now.?

This is as true for startups as it is for any other activity.?

U.S. President John F. Kennedy said in his 1962 moon speech:?“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

It is not easy nor will it be. But we can still try to enjoy the ride together.

This piece was originally published in the Austrian technology magazine e-media in a slightly different German version.

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In any case, I wish you a wonderful Sunday, my dear friends. ??