The theme for this month’s collection of quotes for entrepreneurs is Small Teams with Big Dreams.
Quotes for Entrepreneurs Curated in July 2023
Theme for this month: Small Teams with Big Dreams–an appropriate one for July 4, Independence Day in America.
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“We believe that entrepreneurship is a team sport”
August Capital motto
It can take a while for people who were stars on the chess team to realize that a startup is a different kind of team.
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“A team is not a group of people who work together but a team is a group of people who trust each other.”
Simon Sinek
I think they also have to be interdependent upon each other to achieve a result they want to achieve but cannot achieve without joint collaboration.
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VICES are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property.
Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.
Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.
In vices, the very essence of crime—that is, the design to injure the person or property of another—is wanting.
It is a maxim of the law that there can be no crime without a criminal intent; that is, without the intent to invade the person or property of another. But no one ever practises a vice with any such criminal intent. He practises his vice for his own happiness solely, and not from any malice toward others.
Lysander Spooner (essay in The Shorter Works and Pamphlets of Lysander Spooner, Vol. 2 (1862-18840)
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“The Long Tail is a way of saying: ‘There’s a ton of tiny markets out there that you can go and serve, and make a decent, if small, living off of.’ That’s your shot at your own little 80/20 microcosm, if you do it right.”
Nash Reilly (@CushyChicken; GH CushyChicken) of FPGA Jobs in HN comment
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Today’s environment is beginning to threaten today’s organizations—finding them seriously deficient in their nervous system design—and that the degree of coordination, perception, rational adaptation, etc., which will appear in the next generation of human organizations will drive our present organizational forms, with their clumsy nervous systems, into extinction.
Douglas Engelbart
h/t Patricia Seybold
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“We work as a team, and we do it my way”
Billy Birmingham as “The Twelfth Man“
I think we’ve all worked for someone like this, let’s hope that what we learned was more effective delegation, not more efficient micromanagement
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“All I want is to live in a society where the people in charge care about the well-being of the people they serve, and place that as their number one priority. Not power. Not the wishes of donors. Not money. Not personal advancement.
Is that too much to ask for?”
Simon Sinek’s “Leaders Eat Last” and Robert Greenleaf’s “Servant Leadership” [PDF] offer prescriptions for effective team and organizational leadership but the if temptations to put yourself first were easier to manage. I have blogged about these concepts in
- Three Insights from Dr. Edward Baker’s “Scoring a Whole in One”
- Combine Clear Goals with Delegation Based on Expertise for High Impact
- Innovation Principles from Ken Iverson’s “Plain Talk”
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“A society that relies on generalized reciprocity is more efficient than a distrustful society, for the same reason that money is more efficient than barter. Trust lubricates social life. Networks of civic engagement also facilitate coordination and communication and amplify information about the trustworthiness of other individuals.”
Robert D. Putnam
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“Google does not hate you, nor does it love you, but your favorite product is made by engineers it can use for something else”
Ivan (@notegone)
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“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
Carl Jung in “Memories Dreams and Reflections” chapter on “Travels: The Pueblo Indians” [Archive]
It’s a very useful insight to bear in mind when a team member or coworker is frustrating you. If everyone finds them difficult that’s a different challenge than if they only set you off. Kevin Kelley said something similar about 60 years later, “A great way to understand yourself is to seriously reflect on everything you find irritating in others.” It was one of his 103 bits of advice (original removed to encourage book sales, but a copy on “Lesson on my 70th birthday“). About a third of Kelly’s advice is a paraphrase of someone else’s insight but this could have also been independently developed.
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“Checks and balances mean conflict and only provide the possibility of freedom, not its assurance. Today there are two kinds of people. Those who say, “I give up because life is absurd and meaningless and there’s no fighting Skynet.” And those who say, “Lord, if my time has come, let me die in a pile of empty digital brass.” And so it has ever been.”
Richard Fernandez in “The New Information World Order“
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“He who wants to get to the source must swim against the current.”
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
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Major Success without many minor failures implies Luck.
Major Success with many minor failures implies A System.”
Alberto Savoia
Savoia suggests: “Prove it to yourself: Make a list # of successful Google/Microsoft products you know, then search online for “Google Graveyard”/”Microsoft Morgue” and look at the ratio.
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“Can we all just decide that Lawrence of Arabia is the fourth and final Indiana Jones movie? I’m sure we’d be happier.”
@dynomight7 in Notes on Lawrence of Arabia (Jul-2023)
Certainly more fitting than either Crystal Skull or Dial of Destiny.
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“The lightning spark of thought generated in the solitary mind awakens its likeness in another mind.”
Thomas Carlyle
This happens in email exchanges, text chat, shared edit of a doc, or live conversations. I think synchronous and asynchronous communication unlock different aspects of collaboration and effective teams embrace both.
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“Start small and on the side. Don’t quit your day job. […] You don’t need to outdo the competition. It’s expensive and defensive. Underdo your competition. We need more simplicity and clarity. […] There’s nothing wrong with staying small. You can do big things with a small team.”
Jason Fried, Keynote Speech, SXSW 2006 [SoundCloud (Fried Starts at 18:00)]
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“Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”
Thomas Jefferson in his First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1801)
h/t Martin Gurri; If there are things you cannot discuss as a team they become a blindspot and significant risk factor. When necessary corrections are prevented they ultimately occur with more force. In the case of a startup this is often dissolution. As Herb Stein observed, “if it can’t go on forever it will stop.” Startup teams must commit to constructive discussion based on the facts of the situation. I know, easy to say, hard to do. Etienne Garbugli and I discuss the challenges of constructive disagreement in Episode 7 of the Time to Market Podcast.
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“Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy.”
W. Somerset Maugham in “The Razor’s Edge” [Faded Page] (1943)
I think this is especially true about the opportunity to work on a high performance team. Nothing lasts forever but it’s a joy when you are able to be a member of one.
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“Bootstrapping is a low burn rate
plus sell before you build
plus speed of learning
to drive traction.”
Ash Maurya (@ashmaurya)
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“Truth generally lies in the coordination of antagonistic opinions.”
Herbert Spencer
Effective teamwork requires constructive disagreement.
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“A viable product is rarely like a work of art, the pure result of personal insight and expression. Instead it flows from conversation and negotiation and feedback from prospects and customers.”
Sean Murphy in “The Illusion of Progress“
Team level conversations and negotiations clearly contribute to a viable product, but if you don’t include insights and suggestions from prospects and customers you are unlikely to succeed.
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“People going in 18 different directions doing interesting things mean the total effort is less than the sum of the parts. You have to decide on a fundamental direction and what makes sense and what doesn’t. You may think focus is about saying yes, but focus is about saying no.”
Steve Jobs at Apple World Wide Developer Conference in 1997
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I caught up with an old friend who has been attending Al Anon to help a relative with an addiction problem; he shared two acronyms and a definition that I think entrepreneurs will also find useful:
- Think: Thoughtful Honest Intelligent Necessary Kind
- Wait: Why Am I Talking?
- Faith: Hope with a Track Record.
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Six Rules of Thumb for Innovation from Christopher Nolan
- Be a craftsman not an artist.
- Combine punctuality, discipline, and secrecy.
- There’s more to the world than meets the eye.
- Constraints breed resourcefulness.
- The highest form of creativity is found by improvising within a set of restrictions.
- Assume it will be a failure and then start working to prevent that.
From David Senra (@FoundersPodcast) in “What I learned from reading The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries, and Marvels of Christopher Nolan by Tom Shone“
Longer list in this tweet.
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Dissent is the cousin of diversity; the respect for wide range of beliefs.
This begins by allowing people the space to say “no”.
If we cannot say “no” then “yes” has no meaning.
Everyone needs a chance to express doubts and reservations without having to justify them, or move quickly into problem solving.
“No” is the beginning of the conversation for commitment.
Doubt and “no” is a symbolic expression of people finding their space and role in the strategy.
It is when we fully understand what people do not want that choice becomes possible.
The leadership task is to surface doubts and dissent without having an answer to every question.Peter Block in “Civic Engagement and the Restoration of Community” [PDF] (2007)
h/t David Gurteen “Yes Has No Meaning if You Cannot Say No”
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“I was in a meeting yesterday with leaders who wanted to increase scope for the team, and I said flat out said no. I told them that I have an operating principle that when you are in a situation where there are lots of firsts & unknowns, you keep it super simple.”
Hà Phan (@hpdailyrant)
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“A man may do an immense deal of good, if he does not care who gets the credit for it.”
Fr. Strickland
I think a team can accomplish quite a bit if they take credit as a team and use mechanisms than external credit for individual members to police members who are not meeting commitments or otherwise not contributing.
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“Complexity happens by default.
Simplicity happens by design.”
Jack Butcher (@jackbutcher)
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“With wolves, solidarity is first but when they hunt, they change roles. The implicit hierarchy depends on who does what. In an organization one unique person makes a difference, but you need teamwork to make it happen.”
C. K. Prahalad quoted in “Can C. K. Prahalad Past the Test?“
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“You may be only working nights and weekends as a risk management strategy, but ask for written commitments. Everyone will know they are not signing up for a hobby project, but a serious effort at a new venture that may take years.”
Etienne Garbugli in “Time to Market Podcast S01 E07: How to Learn From Co-Founder Disagreements“
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“I told my strategists to collect receipts. Know when and why something works or fails, for whom, at what scale. Make the learning goals, data collection plan and actionables clear.”
Hà Phan (@hpdailyrant)
I like the use of “collect receipts.” I reminds me of a quote often incorrectly credited to Winston Churchill:
“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”
Ian Gilmour
h/t Henry Codolfing and Barry Popik
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“Every science consists in the coordination of facts; if the different observations were entirely isolated, there would be no science.”
Auguste Comte
Small teams that can develop and maintain a shared situational awareness are able to leverage diverse observations and perspectives to pursue their vision.
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“No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.”
Halford Luccock
Teams that span multiple disciplines and can blend different kinds of expertise will go far.