Start-up or die !
Eric Kenis
Co-Founder of Move Any Mountain (Learn, Train and EdTech Accelerator) ; Investor Matchmaker and Searcher for start-ups ; Ghostwriter for entrepreneurs.
Order now the book 'Belgium's cutting-edge entrepreneurs' with more than 40 cases of successful scale-ups and start-ups and over 40 quality pictures by some of Belgium's best reputed portrait photographers. www.belgiumscuttingedge.com
Any organization - startups, scaleups, but also regular SMEs, corporate organizations or even public authorities and midfield players - must have the startup mentality or they won’t survive. In the words of intuo’s co-founder Tim Clauwaert : every company should permanently be in startup modus. There is no other way to survive.
I built my own simple formula to define startup culture:
STARTUP CULTURE = EFFICIENCY x MEANING x FREEDOM
Efficiency
In a startup there Is no room for politics. Politics only slows things down and is thus counter-efficient. If there is time for politics, it means that there are too many people and more importantly some wrong people in your venture. The best brain workers risk to start working sub-optimally and will probably leave quickly when politics start lingering in your company.
Good people want to go fast. Results must be visible. If things don’t progress this new generation of entrepreneurs will not keep doing it. And neither will their employees.
Meaning
Entrepreneurship is about making the difference. About changing the world – or a little piece of it at least. Meaning has two levels. On the level of the entrepreneur: people will build their business and keep on developing their business as long as they make a difference in the world. If is not meaningful (anymore), they will quit and start doing something else. Their employees wil keep on doing their job with heart and soul if their role in the company is meaningful. If not they will change employer or start doing their own thing.
Freedom
Needless to say that their freedom is an important value for an entrepreneur. If she or he is restricted by too many instances telling her or him what to do and leave they will not have the same drive and enthusiasm for long and it won’t last. As far as their employees are concerned, they want freedom too. Scale-ups employ entrepreneurial committed people, ready to run the extra mile. The employees need trust and freedom in stead of command and control. Needless to repeat: there’s a – worldwide - war for talent out there. Intrapreneurs are a scarce good - data scientists and IT-developers are a scarce good. The employer doesn’t select the employee anymore, it is vice versa.