Startups Are Like Nude Camps

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“Nobody knows anything.” That’s what William Goldman, renowned Hollywood screenwriter, once claimed about the enigma all content creators face when seeking a secret sauce for success. When it comes to which films, stories, books, etc. will tickle people’s fancy, and generate box office success, we’re all utterly clueless. We know nothing.

Startups are an exercise in taming chaos. More than that, maybe, it’s is an exercise in knowing nothing. Not having a firm grasp on the initial conditions on the space in which you’re operating, and therefore not being able to approximately map the outcome of this sensitive dependency. It’s a theory of chaos.

There’s a skepticism that’s constitutive of startups. It’s an exercise in nudity. Running a startup is like getting your pants dropped every single day in front of everyone.

It’s a constant reminder and proof that you’ve no idea what you’re doing. The Emperor and the CEO have no clothes. The harder you fight, the more frustrated you’ll become.

I’m reminded of that wonderful parable given by the ancient skeptic, Sextus Empiricus about the painter Apelles.

He was painting a horse and wanted to represent in his picture the lather on the horse’s mouth; but he was so unsuccessful that he gave up, took the sponge on which he had been wiping off the colours from his brush, and flung it at the picture. And when it hit the picture, it produced a representation of the horse’s lather. (PH I 28)

Basic lesson from our friend Apelles. Enjoy your symptom. Be humble. Double-down on not-knowing and constantly seek to grow and learn and discuss with the smart people you’ve placed around you. Fling your brush over to your teammates and the community who’ve been there before. Doing this will, let’s hope, contribute to painting your company’s vision.

Startup founders can engage in as much body art as they want but they’ll never escape the fundamental fact that, ultimately, startups and the speed at which things are moving, and the complexity that we face, we’re naked under that ornamentation.

This is the basic feeling I get quite often at least.![content-marketing-in-a-loveless-world-7-638.jpg]