The startup culture has arrived in the general public and is being marketed medially. The actual core of the movement comes out of sight - the inventory of an insider.
Starting a startup is as popular today as playing in a rock band in the early 1990s. Since 2010, I have been deeply involved in the Europe startup scene, and at that time the term "startup" was familiar to very few people. Today, startups are omnipresent TV shows and journalists report on them, boards of listed companies hone their employees that you can survive only with startup agility, and any startup is suddenly called "startup".
It is good that established companies look to us for Startupper and want to exchange on an equal footing, that the policy increasingly recognizes the relevance of startups, that the media take up the topic and even TV shows like "The Cave of the Lions" or in Austria 2 minutes 2 million gives the topic wide-reaching and entertaining. But what is increasingly lacking is the context while the entrepreneurial spirit is awakened to a certain extent, at the same time startups are trivialized.
Why do people actually start? Why do startups fail, and why do we never give up? Why do we work in coworking spaces and are "lean"? And why do we seem to "pitch" on every occasion? Such fundamental questions are submerged in the general hype, but they are indispensable to understand today's startup culture.
What is a startup?
Let's take a step back and ask: What is a startup? Loosely defined, it is an early stage of a company looking for a scalable business model with high growth potential. The decisive factor is the "phase". Because it is not about a lifestyle, as some media perspective suggests, this is just a consequence of the framework that brings this phase with it.
Motivation
Mostly, the founders are concerned with solving a problem that they have identified for themselves and then successively realized that there are other people who have a similar problem as well. This problem is mostly mission at the same time and therefore intrinsic motivation. Monetary interests are never the primary motivator. Anyone who wants to start a startup to make quick money will quickly realize that a startup is everything, but not easy money.
Fail
Frequently, in connection with startups, the "culture of failure" is discussed. Again, the context is often missing, because it is not about bankruptcy or lack of quality, to creditors bounce or to give up. Because a startup is an early stage of a business looking for a business model, there is often no validation so startups are based on hypotheses. And hypotheses are either confirmed or refuted. In that sense one could say: Failure is an inherent part of the startup nature, Crucial is the courage to try new things, or in the words of Mark Zuckerberg: "Move fast and break things".This sentence hits the essence for me: It's about as fast as possible to try things directly on the market or at the customer. Thus, the resonance is lightning fast and the drop height remains manageable.
Lean
One method or perhaps even a main principle is the lean startup principle: Build, Measure, Learn, Repeat is almost a mantra build fast, watch and measure the market, learn from it, and do that for so long, until the solution was found. During this time, it is important to keep costs as low as possible. Coworking and open space
The main reason why coworking spaces and open space offices are so popular with startups is simply cost-effectiveness and flexibility. A table can be rented immediately and canceled at any time. The costs are very manageable compared to a specially equipped office with lifestyle that has little to do. Sure, you can build a certain network in this context, but working in coworking spaces and open-space offices is one thing: hard work. It's noisy, restless, you can barely talk undisturbed but it's cost effective. And finally, it is only intended for one phase: the startup phase. As soon as the startup is running, a separate office is being searched for. Large corporations that adopt the open space principle for their employees often hide this context.
Pitching
Pitching is an integral part of startup life, but here too the context is central. Because startups do not pitch because they enjoy it or want to be particularly entertaining, but simply to make their voice heard. At an early stage, neither potential customers nor potential investors are interested in unknown ideas and teams. It is therefore important to pitch your own startup on every occasion until the desired success has been achieved and you are listening to customers, investors and or the media. But: Unlike some TV formats suggest, a successful pitch is not enough, that's only the beginning. The pitch is all about arousing the other's interest in getting your foot in the door to be able to talk afterwards in peace. Whether it then results in a solid connection, is at this time still in the stars.
Investment
Once again it is reported that a startup has received half a million euros investment, it seems at first incredibly much money. But an investment is not a gift and a sum of "500k", as it is often called in the scene, is not much money for a startup with 10 employees. An investment buys time or access to marketing, technology, etc. but it does not mean it enriches the founders.
Rating
If a startup already has customers and sales and maybe even one or the other financing round behind it, then an evaluation is tangible. For an early-stage startup, a rating is usually a matter of interpretation Media reports on incredibly high startup ratings suggest the fallacy: The founders are now rich! However, they are really only rich in trust from investors and possibly customers.
Conclusion: The vision counts
As much as I am pleased with the attention that startups and the startup scene are currently receiving, this is also increasingly creating an expectation that suggests that startups are about lifestyle and fast money. That's not true from my experience. Rather startups are always even concerned about living their own dreams. This vision, this intrinsic motivation also makes you live a lifestyle that is not always pleasant. Also, the key finding is that a startup is always just a phase in which to validate the underlying hypothesis. The by-product of this validation is experience and possibly much more.