10 things every startup should forbid
1. PowerPoint
If you can’t stand up and convey what you want to say, at most with some scribbles on a white board, you most probably have no clue what you are talking about. And even if you do you lack the confidence and the succinctness to convey it. So go get a job at IBM
2. Voting – of any kind !
Startups are not democracies. They are brutal dictatorships bred in trenches. Management by consensus is like trying to gather votes in the gutter when the enemy is marching full speed ready to tramp all over you. If you don’t have a strong leader who can take decisions get the hell out.
3. Meetings over 1 hour
And thats generous. If people can’t get their message across in an hour tell them to apply for the Oprah show. You dopnt have time for fluff
4. HR managers
Please. Let’s get real. The last one i had was a woman that spoke like a constipated chicken who protested when i asked her to give us a hand to move the desks when we were relocating. It wasn’t part of her duties she said. So i relieved her of any!
5. Reading Techrunch
Unless you want to be brainwashed that success = fundraising and sucking up to a bunch of nitwits who’s investment manifesto is who can blow the hottest fart out their arse without burning their pubic hair
6. Hiring ‘superstar’ been-there-done-that management material
OK we’ve heard it, enough already. A players hire A players, B players hire B & C players bla bla bla. That’s the sort of crap investors brainwash you with to turn what’s an entrepreneurial, maverick culture that gets shit done – and got your startup off the ground in the first place – to a corporate, beurcratic, red-tape-ridden, cash-draining, more-painful-than-watching-paint-dry boring culture ruled by a bunch of bozos who talk in buzzwords.
You want A players ? Hire mavericks with a chip on their shoulder with something to prove. And shit all over those so called superstars. They will poisoon your company with arrogance of the worst kind : the least deserved !
7. Counting holidays
Anyone who counts holidays in a startup doesn’t belong there. You want to count holidays ? Go work for KUONI. Put a whiteboard above your bed and tally them up. If you are a true startup-at-heart team player the only thing you count is how many steps closer you are today to hitting your target. Everything else is garbage
8. MBAs
As my uncle says “i have an MBA too. Im Married But Available”
9. Buzzwords
Anything that’s repeated more than once in an MBA book should be strictly forbidden. If you can’t express what you want to say in plain English your customers most likely won’t understand it anyway.
10. ‘Good’ stuff
As the famous book says, Good is the enemy of Great. If you develop a culture of ‘good enough’ you will build mediocre products that fail to wow people. You can only aim for Great stuff. Anything less than that is crap.
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