The unqualified founder and the high-speed qualified salt flat
PRE-DISCLAIMER — THIS IS AN ESSAY PART OF WORK IN PROGRESS RELATED TO THE BOOK IN PROGRESS ENTITLED SLOW DOWN TO START-UP.
Who is this founder? I’m not a qualified entrepreneur. I’m also not a qualified practitioner, or an investor, or even a qualified software engineer which was the formal title I got when I moved to Silicon Valley. Now and wondering how that iconic company [*] had hired an unqualified software engineer that could not speak English, it comes to my mind another facet — of the unqualified artist.
But I share something with all of these characters — that I’m sympathetic to their causes, to their movement. When wearing my founder helmet, which I did many times, I had seen a promising ground, like a salt lake flat. I had put gas in the tank, an energy to accelerate, an invitation to run. And I hacked my own motorcycle, forged its pistons by hand, and polished its tires, unqualified. Having arrived there, I wanted to be timed, or validated, perhaps break the world’s record. But too, I knew, I wanted to run, to be there, to accelerate.
Founders are not different from qualified sport professionals or qualified artists. They want to break the record, perhaps put a dent in the universe; But they also love to be part of the movement.
Our environment — of tools, methods, and the social mechanisms — given by this now networked and digital world, sometimes looks like that salt lake flat. They invite us to join and to accelerate. And we know, about the many things in front of us, that abundant world of solutions — with voices, narratives, tools, and grounds — all which give us a way for doing, by interacting, by iterating. Yes, it can be overwhelming. But yes that is not a flat land meant to slow us down. In reality, what we see, and what we get, are things to boost our movement, to take us to move faster, even faster.
Consider, for example, the cost to access motivation from these networks. We can be thrilled with stories that enlighten our entrepreneurial spirit. On the other hand, consider the tools, or methods, that are proven to advance collaboration. But more than motivation and processes, we are equally able to advance the actual startup using actual networks of support, the interactive spaces where we can get in touch with potential customers, investors, mentors, practitioners, cofounders, partners, and more.
In this world, there are far many solutions to help us throughout all the process steps [^footnote_tonyulwick_jobmap] of the entrepreneurial effort. In other words, the modern entrepreneur is well equipped — if not in a hypermarket of offerings — with solutions to help them from definition into execution and up to conclusion. No way all that there is can or should be thought, as a bad ground for founders and their startups. Even if their starting journey looks a bit like a desert and quite a lonely place, as soon as they set foot they get to be literally equipped, literally augmented, and literally into a process — which sets them into what it feels to be state of readiness, feeling energetic and being empowered, and ready to action.
But we can’t blame, can we? Because we know that although through turbulence and chaos these building blocks are passive, not aggressive. We know that it is up to us to use these bricks, when we need them, as we need them. Because that is what we do — in that arena — and how we get our grades and credits. All in all, we know, they are just another brick for us to build. This situation goes with an optimistic view from Marc Andreesseen — the founding partner of A16Z, the renowned top-tier venture capital firm from Silicon Valley — of how abundance correlates to power of action:
> *”We believe the measure of abundance is falling prices. Every time a price falls, the universe of people who buy it get a raise in buying power, which is the same as a raise in income. If a lot of goods and services drop in price, the result is an upward explosion of buying power, real income, and quality of life.”* (Andreessen, M., A16z, 2023)
Marc’s note makes me see our world as a hypermarket, abundant, almost infinite, colorful, expensive and cheap. This is so when I wear my consumer hat. But it takes me too to consider another hypermarket, for when I wear that helmet. And again, it’s positive. Being there I feel empowered with a raise, a raise in entrepreneurial power. When I enter it, when I decide to do it, I feel empowered to enjoy all that is given through its aisles, of tools, methodologies, platforms, networks, and more. All that is given is given and applicable at a given time, I know. All are things which are quite qualified.
In the context of the book, Slow Down to Start Up, this is when the mess starts. The mess of us navigating the richer world, the given, the world we had built. And how that can set our views, our perspectives, and to consider the challenging space which may affect what we are expected to build. We are builders, indeed. But we may also be sometimes bundled. Here we are being called to unbundle ourselves in order to build.
Post-Disclaimer: The image of the salt lake flat and the biker is inspired by and characterized in the story of Burt Munro, as depicted in the movie “The World’s Fastest Indian,” which starred Anthony Hopkins. For more information about the book, Slow Down to Start Up, get in contact or visit the site.
