0 Start-up Culture
Lately I’ve been really interested in the start-up culture. Ya know?! Build an initial product, show investors, get 3 rounds of funding, profit and then sell the company for millions or something like that.
Every company goes through a single phase called “start-up”. I call it a phase because it’s often misconstrued as a business model. Tons of people consider 37signals a start-up even though they’ve been publicly successful for the past 5 or 6 years. However, they are well out of the start-up phase and by normal standards, they didn’t really take the start-up route. However, it’s ironic considering a lot of web start-ups use their open source web framework, Ruby on Rails.
Dos CEO
Although, it wasn’t up until a few years ago that the culture started gaining real popularity (in a mainstream way). Maybe I’m just biased because its so vibrant in the web industry, but there is something to be said about folks who take an idea, slap a business model on it and profit. It takes a certain kind of person to really make ideas pop. These people are usually referred to as executives and are commonly known as CEO’s. They execute funding, business models and growth for a said company or product.
There are all kinds of CEO’s. I’ve only encountered two. The first being the “Salesmen”. He or she runs around spewing praises, screaming revolution about their darling product or service. They often forget that there are slaving men and women actually making the product happen. Salesmen often don’t understand deadlines in tandem with reality. They often think that saying, “I need this done yesterday” is the best motivational speech in the world. The team loses their mind and the company goes belly up.
The other kind of CEO and the ones I respect the most are the “Architects”. Aside from selling the product they often aid in the actual building and development of the product in a real way. Usually they’ll bring to the table tons of experience that are heavily relevant to the company’s goals and operation. Unlike the “Salesmen”, they understand industry limitations, realistic deadline management and making sure their team/employees are happy and supported.
Conclusionistic Ending
Yes, I made that word up. Anyway. The start-up culture in my opinion will be the economic darling of the centuries ahead. In this culture you will see a lot of innovation and problem solving that we haven’t experienced almost since the days of Edison. For me, innovation can never be consumed as innovation doesn’t really end. How we recognize that innovation is really what makes folks like Edison and Einstein pillars for multiple generations.