The Secret of Successful Start-up
The "after Selfie face" theory applied to Start-upper
Half-serious suggestion for angels investors
I am very lucky since I live in the "Eternal city" of Rome; I like very much to walk trough delightful medieval backstreets in the Downtown of Rome enjoying the ancient ruins, fascinating renaissance buildings and refreshing myself in charming baroque fountains.
Taking these walks I met a lot of tourists coming from all over the world to enjoy Rome; I run into group of friends, cute couple of sweethearts or Just Married "selfying" every minute at every step.
So thanks to my "scientific" observation of this trend I developed a theory based on facial expressions AFTER the Selfie is taken and stored in the smartphone.
In fact taking the photo every people show off outstanding smiles and glance back to each other in a charming way....But once the Selfie is taken you can see in the facial expression if they are really enjoying or not, so you can predict if, at the end of that holiday, they will have a baby, take another vacation but in different places (:-D) or divorce .
Since I have been a start-upper once and being now also part of a lot of initiatives to boost innovation I suggest to apply the same skill at start-uppers or innovators pitches.
During the pitch every start-upper are enthusiast of their ideas and of their team, they give the floor to each other in a enchanting way and you would invest billions on their business....But behind the curtains of the big stage and after the speech you can see how they really interact and you can predict it they will work or not in delivering the idea;
You have to see the passion sparkling from the eyes and the eager to be a change maker has to be the DNA for each one of the team; the start-uppers have to encourage each other, all of them has to be mentor or coach for the others; they have to look in the same direction, it is not important to be all tech-ninjas in a start-up because technical issues are often solvable; if the idea is good but the team is not you could run into a universe of "not-technical" issues difficult to address and solve, remembering that :
If you can hire people whose passion intersects with the job, they won't require any supervision at all. They will manage themselves better than anyone could ever manage them. Their fire comes from within, not from without. Their motivation is internal, not external.-Stephen Covey
100 % agree with you Raf
CEO at Open Rainbow Ltd.
9 年Hi Alessandro, hope you are doing well, and good to hear from you!! This morning i was reading your post and have been happy you raised this. it's a very cool argument! I just wanted to add something to your post as i think there are few key things missing. After almost 20 Years of working experience and many companies i've been working for, the start-up i was part of, have been successful without many of the "nice to have things" you listed. I do agree these are the real good ingredients of a nice enjoyable start-up !! The one i did was H3G (Milan and Rome). We were building the new network for the 3 operator, and i do remember very well that experience. A start-up is something that brings something new, and this new is coming from an idea. I believe it's all about being inspired by something. By having said that, what i've seen for a long time now is that there are very few people left that inspires, that broadcasts the energy that people should breath to really enjoy what you do every day to complete that start-up, ..... that idea. That start-up i mentioned, the one i experienced, was continuos stress .. managers just making sure they could complete their task no matter what was needed to get it done. Bullying, politics and so forth. I'm talking about the leaders that drives the people and guide them to be one core of that beautiful project each start-up represents. This is something you don't buy or grow as a skill-set, it's all coming from a very rare gift. So i would not only pretend that people that are part of the team do their best in order to make it so successful and enjoyable, but i would like to mark it to the managers and leaders to be committed in order to make that happen. i'm in the same line of people that need to motivate and guide a team of people to boost innovation of the company i work for. Motivation is triggered by that leadership. I hope i made myself clear on my explanation even though very short and quickly made from my mobile phone. Hope to hear from you soon, and good luck Regards Raffaele Geuns