The circle of startup life

It’s a sad day in a way – today marks the end of Gist, a company I had the pleasure of working for through its evolution from a scrappy startup pioneering new ways to manage social contacts through its acquisition by Research in Motion – the BlackBerry folks. And it’s a happy (albeit bittersweet) day as well. The end of Gist is a great time to reflect on the nature and purpose of startups – how fickle they are, how fragile, and how magical.

I love startups because they strip away the unnecessary parts of corporate america and focus on putting together a team to address a market and (hopefully) to solve a problem that people (and customers) want solved. Asking customers to hire your startup for the job they want solved – and hearing feedback from them that you solved that job well – is a great rush.

The purpose of a startup is – I think – very simple. The goal is to either build a grand, successful business, attract acquisition potential (and culminate in an acquisition), or to fail – as quickly as possible. That sounds a bit harsh when you put it that way but consider it as an efficient use of capital to make more capital. Along the way there are great relationships built, features created, and features (and products thrown away or pivoted because … sometimes … customers don’t think the way that you do.)

Working in a startup can be quite tiring (even if it’s also amazing.) It’s hard because the impetus to get things done is almost certainly self-driven. Customers will ask you to build features and functionality, and the team is the only driver to actually make that happen. There are always constraints, be they money, time, or people. And the reward for working in that startup is most often the reward of a challenge met, a job (sometimes well) done, and the knowledge that “hey, we did that.” is quite cool.

And surviving and thriving in a startup (or in a small, entreprenuerial business unit after that startup has been successfully acquired) is an ongoing process. There are some days when it’s hard to listen to customers ask you about a feature that’s not done yet; or when you’re not sure what to do next; or when you’d just like more sleep. And there are more days when you look at what’s possible to get done in a brief amount of time with small amounts of resources and the result is nothing short of amazing.