You might be wondering what has Titanic to do with startups. Is it about the Shipping industry or the kind of startups which was there 100 years ago or anything related to the sinking of titanic, or the book The Titanic effect etc. No, I am not going to talk on any of those issues rather I have developed a very simple yet unnoticed theory for the Startups which are booming in today’s time. Whatever I am going to write here is totally based on my understandings, experience and the research I did and it doesn’t involve any fundings from any firm or individual to defame any other individual or firm.
I will talk about India because firstly it’s my country and secondly because it’s a country of 1.33 Billion people which means a great market for any organisation. Now why Titanic? Let me come to that first.
RMS Titanic – The Biggest and the luxurious ship was the eye candy for the entire world some 100 years back. It was one of the unsinkable ship ever built. People used phrases like “God himself could not sink this ship” but we all know what happened. It took 2 hours and 40 minutes for the Unsinkable to sunk. 3 Major reasons why Titanic sank – 1. The Ship was Going too Fast and avoided Warnings 2. The Materials were Compromised 3. The Absence of Binoculars If any of these would have taken care of, the tragedy wouldn’t have had happened. Now why I am telling you all this is because we are going to relate the Titanic story with the Today’s Titans – The Startups.
If we talk about the Startups, they are doing great today. But they might land up in trouble tomorrow if they don’t focus on what’s happening within them. Like Titanic, they can sink too because as we learnt 100 years back that nothing is Unsinkable. Let’s now relate the very same reasons why Titanic sunk with the Startups operations and how it should be ready for the invisible battle.
1. The Ship was Going too Fast and avoided warnings The most important thing among all the startups is that they try to go very fast and at times avoid the visible warnings, leave about the invisible ones. The race to million dollar then billion dollar, next Unicorn, and Decacorn, etc. is what startups aims to. In all this, sometimes they forget the main reason behind starting the company. Startups become great because of the idea they come with. They find a gap or the need and they fill it. But in the long run the focus majorly shifts to money and the idea starts bending like a curve. Money comes in but with great demand of time. The more the money, the more will be the demand of work. This sometimes creates havoc within the firm and we might see this via their wreckage or breakage. This happens when warnings are avoided. When the rising startups notices issues like poor retention or employees mostly bad mouthing, then they should start looking for solutions rather than creating alternatives. I personally know firms where poor retention is considered normal and employees abusive behaviour is encouraged. The long game becomes difficult for these types of company. Just because they rule the industry for some period they start thinking that they are Unsinkable but we know nothing lasts.
2. The Materials were Compromised Many a times, startups compromise with their ideas in order to gain the investments. For example, if Educational startups starts using cheap selling techniques with fake promises to the parents of the child, it not only breaks their trust but also ruin the future of the child. Similarly, if a food delivering startup starts adding any unhygienic restaurant just to fulfil the desired target set by their investors, it’s definitely going to harm the health of the consumer. Many startups which we all know have used multiple ways to degrade their quality just to add some big numbers in their investments. More than 90 startups in India are heavily funded by Chinese investors which is one of the major concern in today’s time in terms of Data security and platform control. If the basic idea of trust and honesty breaks, the firm may survive for a long period of time due to its monopoly but will go down as soon as any other option comes in.
3. The Absence of Binoculars A pair of binoculars helps the Captain of the Ship to see far and is of utmost importance at the sea. If at all the Captain misses it, he/she can’t see the hurdles as well as how far and which direction one should go. The same happened with Titanic where the incharge missed it before the voyage and the entire ship had to pay the price. Similarly, every startup should have a pair of binoculars – The Strategist and The Executioner. Prashant Kishor acted as the Strategist part of the binoculars while Narendra Modi played the Executioner part for the BJP in 2014 Lok Sabha elections which made them win the election with huge margin while in 2015 Bihar Assembly elections, BJP not only lost its Strategist part of the binoculars but also the election. Now if we talk about the startup world, we know how poaching works there. This happens via two methods or process you may call. One method is where Company A offers huge benefits and Top position to the second bests or the game changer of Company B. The other method is hiring the good sacked people of the other company and give them the missing parts. A company should always keep the important assets together because it is not only going to be negative for them but it will be a positive for rivals. In chess, the battle is not won on one side of the board, you have to see what is happening on the other side and for that, you should definitely not lose your pair of binoculars.
India in few years has become the third largest tech startup in the world with over 9,300 tech start-ups in the country. Also, according to a report by IBM institute for Business Values and Oxford economics found that 90% of the Indian Startups fail within first year – Lack of innovation being the main reason. Startups are symbol of Free Work, Power of Ideas and Innovation at its best but the sad reality is that like every other thing, it also gets monetised. I personally have lots of respect for startups because one fine day even I want to start one too and I have to make sure that I won’t fall in this pit of monetisation. For me, hard earned money via my principles is of utmost value and one of the basic principle I follow is that of Archimedes- “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth”RAHAT
Comments