Running an Antifragile Startup
I recently finished reading Antifragile from Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In short - it’s amazing. Easily makes it to my Top 10 Books Ever Read list. Everyone should read it for business and for life. It unifies Wall St bailouts, Silicon Valley’s success, why restaurants are good, and why the Paleo diet is best for your body.
What does antifragile mean? - It means things that gain from disorder.
Or as wikipedia says:
“Simply, antifragility is defined as a convex response to a stressor or source of harm (for some range of variation), leading to a positive sensitivity to increase in volatility (or variability, stress, dispersion of outcomes, or uncertainty, what is grouped under the designation "disorder cluster”). Likewise fragility is defined as a concave sensitivity to stressors, leading a negative sensitivity to increase in volatility.“
So, I’ve reflected on my time at the early days of oDesk and what we did. I believe we were doing some practices that were antifragile, we just didn’t have a good way to describe it. Obviously, Taleb is far more eloquent and intelligent than I am.
We had some sayings in those early days:
- Throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks.
- Break sh!t.
- Play whack-a-mole
- Fast fail.
- Try before you buy.
- Be more experimental.
All of these things have elements of being antifragile. It’s also basically at the heart of the Lean Startup movement. Embracing failure and learning by observation tends to be better than lots of theorizing about the best strategy.
If I were in a startup now, I’d constantly be thinking about how to make the businsess antifragile. How to make mistakes and learn from all of them. How to make sure that all employees have "skin in the game.” How to create a culture of rapid iteration and experimentation. How to limit downside and maximize upside potential.
Now - go read the book and Be Antifragile.