The Start-up Society

What do you associate with the word start-up?

If your mind connects with headlines grabbing large VC rounds, college drop-outs to professional drop-outs and yes, some who managed to complete degrees, technology, gravity defying growth rates and lot of breaking convention from approaching a problem to new solutions, then we are fundamentally on the same page and welcome to the article. Let’s explore more.

Why Start up?

That’s because it’s how we have managed to innovate, survive, become creative, solve and learn from mistakes. David Eagleman and Anthony Brandt in their book Runaway Species argue that humanity’s unique capability to remake the world is unmatched by any other living beings.

Far from being a professional activity, it is an institutional exercise in solving existing or new problems, or build a new experience.

The case for institutional exercise is when it is developed with an objective to manifest over a long-term.

The Society

For the diversity called India, presenting world’s most heterogeneous complexity from economic to the cultural, the problems of health, happiness and growth present great intellectual, political and social challenge.

From basic education to employment, infrastructure to logistics, striving to self-sufficiency, the depressed to the inspired, the India laboratory has important challenges for solving, for humanity at large.

In start-up parlance, a unicorn is a company that has reached a billion dollar valuation, recognizing its value creation in the enterprise journey and inviting great investor interest.

So, India with a billion plus people is a demographic unicorn, and already home to several unicorns that are deftly capturing world attention.

Together with a prestigious position in space research and applications, a bastion of select few countries, the wheels of our start-up instinct is in motion.

The agenda here is to make it deeper.

Going to School 

School is where the conditioning starts of young minds and can be directed either to score more, or “solve more”. 

In the mindset to score more there is finiteness of outcome; you try to overpower a subject within its defined chapters and to the overzealous student or, parent the evolved world of test preparations serve as great performance enhancing steroids.

The solve more mindset is about applying knowledge, life skills, taking decisions and seeing the results; then, work on the feedback loop, thereby honing deeper capabilities.

In a village school, it may be about discussing the problems concerning the school, if not of the village; it may be about repairing the school roof, and hence working right from raising funds to working with the school staff and involving the students of varying grades from basic masonry to understanding roof design.

At the end of this exercise, at least 15-20 students would have figured out what it takes to raise funds, getting resourceful to also applying or, learning design skills that they can take to life.

In a regular scenario, if the students graduate scoring high marks under a failing roof and being taught that fixing the roof is either government or, school management problem - what do they take to life?

The “solve more” mindset illuminates with the idea of a problem to solve, bringing ownership and partnership with like-minded people and connects to greater resourcefulness.

It creates a generation that does not whine, or dismisses that “it is not my business, or problem to solve”!

In our Organizations

Going back to a start-up, at the very start it is the founder and a handful of initial employees who fix everything from sales to the leaking tap in the bathroom. 

As the organization grows, and later tens to thousands get added, there is the classic division of labor for efficiency. Then problems acquire context and functional character – HR problem, Finance problem, Sales problem or Ops problem, and worst of all higher Competition problem.

At the heart of every founder and every organization is the basic question – what do they solve? This is a unique answer that employs creativity, human enterprise and resources, one of which is technology.

Taking the school analogy, if the employees are conditioned to meet revenue or expense targets, or functional outperformance then the organization may create outcomes, but not institutionalize or develop sufficiently problem solving and multiplier thinking.

Another interesting component of the start-up culture is the excellence shown by 20 year olds, or when a working professional finds a stronger cause to solve, without barriers of hierarchy or, limitations by geography or, capability.

Fundamentally, problems faced by organization or, any society has no prescribed age or, mandatory requirement for relevant experience to solve. Only a society, organization or, individuals conditioned to solve at scale, will think of the engineering required to approach the problem.

At the level of individual employee, it will manifest as new insights, micro-innovations and translate into growth rates betraying conventional industry or, GDP linked rates.

Solve at 5x Scale

In this concluding part, let’s explore how do build something that is not a 10% or, a 50% improvement, but a 5x improvement? Peter Theil passionately inspires the idea of Zero to One, in his bestseller.

Let’s take a scenario – An ageing 50 year bridge on a river is in need of repairs. How do we approach this problem?

Minimalist thinking - Putting simple reinforcement repairs that can extend the bridge life by say 10 years, and have a Rs. 5cr outlay. 

What if the bridge connects to an industrial hub, a key port or to build a new technology hub and instead of this 2-lane bridge, a new 4-lane bridge with rail connectivity can increase economic output by Rs. 1,000cr and tax collections over 5 year term by Rs. 200cr? Would you still invest Rs. 5cr in repairs?

The opportunity statement expanded when the problem was shifted from a 50 year bridge connecting two unknown points, to one that presents greater scale. 

In favour of the decision to put a new bridge, imagine the level of employment and economic activity that can develop versus minor repairs, purely from a multiplier thinking.

Conclusion

To again not shift this to a government, or my organization problem to develop problem solving as a way of life, let’s introspect some more and enjoy the idea of solving; plant a tree, than whine that green cover is receding, speak up about an idea that we believe, no matter who is in audience and what if we fail…it would not be our first, and neither our last, at least we dared.

It is a society that we will develop where problems will never go, but we will solve with preparedness, curiosity and develop new knowledge.