Each startup has its ups and downs.

Every successful startup boots up with a great idea, and then grows.

This growth, more or less, goes through
the following stages:

• The Seed Stage
• The Start-up Stage
• The Second Stage
• The Third Stage
• The Bridge/Pre-public Stage
• The Exit stage

That’s what’s written in the textbooks. Pretty straightforward, huh?
That’s also how VCs look at the point at hand

… but from the founders’ perspective the can of worms look “very”, very different

The Actual Startup Life Cycle

Here’s a more in-depth view of a startup’s lifecyle.

Well, that’s what I call complicated .

But that’s not everything.

Due to the very nature of the startup, the team keeps unintentionally digging a hole for themselves deeper and deeper…

A Decline Begins…

Any startup that has passed beyond its seed stage will have

• Overconfidence due to initial rapid successes,
• Self-deception and myopia,
• Lack of flexibility,
• or, on the contrary, being too much flexible and quickly depleting resources,
• and not being able to create a sustainable cash flow

The biggest problem is, how, and for how long, the business will support this negative cash flow.

These problems will sooner, than later, turn the startup upside down:
Employees who lose their trust will jump ship. Moreover there will be layoffs, panic and chaos.

This decline phase may be the quickest end of the unprepared.

The Resurrection

“I believe what doesn’t kill you simply makes you… stranger”
– The Joker (Heath Ledger)

For the selected few who survive the storm, a very painful resurrection begins:

• The team will bond together, more than ever, to make their dream come true.
• The team will share the good, and the not so good, more than ever.

Isn’t it usually from understanding of the not so good that the best emerges?

The leaders forcefully choose to be reborn from their ashes.
They have no other option but to support this renewal.

Choosing this renewal is painful, and it requires tremendous commitment.

• The leaders adopt the behavior they want to see in the organization (modeling),
• The leaders communicate a vision in a way that causes others to adopt it as their own (inspiration),
• The leaders challenge the processes and adopt change (innovation),
• The leaders create a climate and opportunity to leverage ideas (action),
• The leaders implant enthusiasm into their organization (passion)

If you are the founder of a startup, you had better burn the following into your head:

In these hard times, having a good team or even an excellent team isn’t enough.

You have to create a “creed“; namely, a group of highly-devoted people:

• A creed who trust each other without question,
• A creed who have similar ways of thinking,
• A creed who have similar ways of learning,
• A creed who have similar ways of reacting,
• A creed who have similar ways of problem-solving,
• And a creed who have similar ways of collaboration.

Further, this team needs to be bond together under a leader (guess who ) they trust and respect.

• They must not be afraid of any type of challenge;
• They must be willing to walk through fire when their leader asks them;
• And they must believe they deserve to be the ones that will change the world.

This is the genesis of a success. Don’t nail it, and you’re not going to get much sleep.

Do this and you and your team can handle anything.
Don’t, and you’ll be heading to the dead pool.

Let me be more straight:

Fuck up your team, and no matter how much you tell yourself otherwise, you’re fucked!

The door is open, the question is do you have the courage to pass through to a better place?

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