Startup Urgency
There is often an almost linear relationship between the size of your startup organization and the urgency applied in making decisions and taking action. Four girls in a garage working on their startup is the pinnacle of startup urgency, while 130 people in some office downtown find it much harder to apply decisions and take actions at a similar velocity. It’s a superpower, really, for the early-stage startup. Our job as founders is to figure out ways to bend that curve and keep the urgency intact for as long as possible. However, consider that a competent team can easily spot an insincere or false version of urgency, and it’ll likely do more harm than good.
Why do we care? The default mode and outcome of any startup is sudden and instant death, and the diagnosis was given as we incorporated. Survival rates increase with the level of urgency applied.
* Urgency in a startup is not an ask to do 60 hour work weeks, but a willingness to make decisions often and early.
** Urgency is not a constant mode of emergency, but doing today what would otherwise have been a next week’s meeting, decision, and task.
