Looks like all start ups have to undergo a ‘disruption’(don’t miss the paradox!) just about the time they are to Stand up in the real world. Almost all have undergone or undergoing this disruption. The latest to join this exclusive club of unicorns is Flipkart. Uber, Housing.com are just a few other examples. This disruption more or less ensures the exit of the original promotors.
But, why it happens with such regularity?
We can draw a parallel between starting a car (Startup stage) and driving it on real road (Stand up and deliver stage), especially in the chaotic Indian roads.
With little understanding of road ahead, but, with high energy and motivation, it’s easy to start a car. It has become much easier after push button start has come into being – push button being the high octane idea. This stage calls for a lot of knowledge and capability to identify a problem and motivation to offer a much more convenient solution than what is available currently. Almost a ‘single mind’ (may be a couple of people) ideal condition activity.
But once the car is started, it has to hit the road to have any meaning. The road is chaotic, people and machines move randomly; all sorts of people and machines - in all shapes and sizes! The skills needed to Drive in a road (Stand up and deliver) to reach a predetermined destination (Valuation, profitability) are totally different from starting the car in the garage (well lit, sound proof, exclusive with hardly any outside disturbance) where many a start ups got started. To add to the vows, the road has real world legal and social systems with all its ills and deficiencies.
Thus Driving (Standing up) is a social activity unlike starting(start-up) which is largely a personal intellectual activity. So, if Startup is IQ driven, Standing up is largely an EQ activity.
To bridge this gap, the promotors bring in real world experts – these experts usually know the ills of real world and have led their companies to success. High on EQ.
But more often than not, these professionals fail to match up to the high octane dynamism and idealism (IQ) of the promotors and end up hanging their boots fast- Ola is a typical example .
This frustrates the promotor and then some ‘not so favorable’ reports in media starts appearing adding the pain of ‘angel investors’. Some promotors end up doing something silly (Travis Kalanick, Uber) and that becomes the last straw which can lead to their exit - mostly engineered from the dark room by Angel investors.
Thus, original promotors are found sitting !
There seems to a pattern to this and its time that a solution to this malice is found.
A few have found a way around this issue and one that comes to mind is Jack Ma of Alibaba. He understood his strength and handed over the driving job to professionals. He focuses on the startup and left the standing up to the experts. I think that is the model for the startup world if they have to stand up!
