Am I Fit for Startups?
Before I went to sleep a few nights ago, I sketched this out. It’s a test anyone has to pass before I want to work with them on a startup. When people pass the test, it makes me excited beyond belief. When someone doesn’t, I can care less about them. They’re furniture.
Though I see where you are coming from Nate (and enjoy the humor), I think your premise is wrong. Your first two stops in the decision tree are related to time, as if time spent working or thinking is the raison d’être of startup life. It is not. There is only one factor that matters. Results. That’s the difference between being an entrepreneur vs. being a rank-and-file employee is being rewarded for results (ownership) vs. being rewarded for punching the clock alone (a paycheck). Obsessive/addictive work habits can lead to results, but they don’t guarantee them - and under certain conditions, they inhibit them. As for the whole “there’s no ‘I’ in ‘Team’” ideal captured in the last two steps of your decision tree, again, you miss the mark as it is a combination of both, especially when you replace the undirected “move markets” (epic blunders move markets too) with “generate results that enhance product/service value for customers”. The correct combination of ‘I’ and ‘we’ would result in this long-winded statement:
“I believe that as both a stakeholder and shareholder, I can produce results that incrementally enhance product/service value for our customers, and I’m committed to holding my colleagues (“we”) to that same belief such that our collective results mark significant positive change.”
The great thing is, from everything I know about you Nate, you can easily answer “Yes” to the above statement.
