Organisms and Startups

Team building exercises. Remember team building exercises? Trust, subordination of individual egos to the collective, division of effort, coordination. Corporations are like organisms in a way, with the organization thriving through specialization of the parts to execute, execute, execute. Or die. David Sloan Wilson draws sharp parallels between corporations and organisms in Darwin's Cathedral, and notes that in a free market there is real competition for resources, mating and spawning of new companies as people leave to start fresh and subdivisions are created.

I'm 3 months into my seed grant for my startup and it is time to start building my team up from just our three current technologists. It has been surprisingly easy so far, which keeps me from suffering too much under the weight of ambiguity. I snagged an ex-Xerox PARC researcher now a prof at Berkeley who is a perfect fit. I have a Chief Scientist at a video sharing startup who has been informally advising me for several years. He's too busy to be really active, but still stays in touch. In-house counsel at an old employer connected me to an ex-CEO who I am tapping for the business side. He may not be a good fit for the consumer web space, but he knows everyone in Sili Valley from his aerie in Saratoga and will undoubtedly be a tremendous asset. I also got set-up for referrals for the critical attorneys when needed. And soon I will be hitting up old contacts on Sand Hill Road. But not until the timing is right.

Optimism is almost palpable here on the Left Coast, as liquid as the fog banks that push in over the coastal range. But the optimism requires teams, specialization, growth, dynamism. Learning to sublimate the research engineer's heads down inward focus and reach out to build a team is one of the hardest and most rewardingly optimistic things I have ever had to do.

The organism is starting to grow.