Startup memes and quotes, used to motivate and inspire, have flooded coworking spaces, home offices and social media feeds. So much so that they have spawned startups of their own.
I’m looking at two ‘startup quotes’ right now. Einstein’s “insanity is doing the same thing every day and expecting different results” and the slightly tacky but still meaningful “life is short, do stuff that matters”. So no, I don’t think all startup, self help or motivational memes are stupid. I think many can serve as a great reminder of core business building and life living principles that help keep people focused on the bigger picture in both business and life.
Having said that though, there are a lot of memes out there that induce a “do you mean to tell me that…” response.
Here are two of my ‘favourites’…
Done Is Better Than Perfect
So you mean to tell me that a product which has flaws but is ‘ready to ship’ is better than a perfect product (which by extension, is also ready to ship)? If they are both ready to ship, I’ll take the perfect product any day, whatever perfect is.
I am a huge advocate of getting sh*t done and the lean startup philosophy of build, measure, learn. While the meme can easily be interpreted by those in the know to mean this, it can also be misinterpreted and can form the foundations of a culture which builds crappy, half baked products.
What it is trying to say: For the purpose of testing a hypothesis, a project which has flaws but allows you to reliably test a hypothesis is better than a perfect project which takes you considerably longer to build.
Costs Are Like Fingernails, You Have To Cut Them Constantly.
You mean to tell me that I should throw a blanket over all of my costs and just keep cutting them? What if some of those costs have shown to generate a very positive ROI. What if increasing those costs will actually increase sales and profitability? Sure, I get it, you need to constantly review costs and optimise your spending. But we can not look at costs as being detrimental to the business success as this meme suggests. Costs are a part of business. Costs are enablers.
What it is trying to say: We should constantly review costs to ensure we are getting the most bang for our buck.
So which startup memes do you at first think are cool but shortly thereafter start questioning?
STEVEGLAVESKI.COM 