Lessons of Greatness: Don't just be resilient, here's how to be anti-fragile

Episode Summary

Everyone knows a fragile team is more likely to fail. But an anti-fragile team is more than just resilient....it's more like a Hydra: When you cut off one of its heads it grows two back in its place. Anti-fragile teams actually get BETTER when the environment around them is high-pressure and chaotic. In this lesson of greatness, we drill down into what it means to be anti-fragile and how you can apply the concept to your own startup team.

Transcript

Manny Medina:

The only thing we had was probably the most important thing any founding team could have, is that all of us went through hell and back and we have the perfect team. We have very literally, a designer, a front end engineer, a backend engineer and a sales guy, and now you have a team of four who trust each other implicitly. We, as a team, are pretty much invincible.

Mike Maples:

A key lesson of greatness we can learn from Manny Medina and Outreach is that antifragile startup teams win. Let's talk about why.

Everyone knows that a fragile team is at greater risk of failure. Startup stories where founder conflict or the inability to make hard choices under the pressure of a harsh economic environment are commonplace. Today, in May, 2020, amidst the chaos of this pandemic, Manny Medina's story is particularly important.

Antifragile is a word coined by Nassim Taleb in a book by the same name. It refers to things that actually benefit from disorder. By way of analogy glass might be fragile. If you put it in a box and shipped it somewhere, you would mark fragile, handle with care. A heavy piece of granted is resilient. You could put it in a box and you wouldn't have to say much of anything about it. It would handle the stress of moving pretty easily.

But an antifragile object is more than just resilient. It would say on the box handle with reckless abandon, the more stress, the better, bring it on. What's inside it would grow with stress, just like when you cut off a Hydra's head, it grows two back in its place. Antifragile team's determination to succeed, actually grows under pressure. So why do antifragile teams have such an advantage? There are three key reasons.

First they thrive under chaos. If you've listened to the other episodes of Starting Greatness, you now realize that massive startup success is an outlier. This is where changes driven by Moore's law, Metcalfe's law, and other exponential factors create these complex and unpredictable ranges of potential future outcomes. The uncertainty and risk is where startups can seize an opportunity that large companies incumbents will approach cautiously.

Second antifragile teams sees the initiative rather than depend on things they can't control. In the coming months you'll see many companies become dependent on external factors for their survival. They will depend on venture money being available. They will hope that the economy will return to how it was before the coronavirus, but this is a defensive posture. This is counting on things outside of your control to go your way. This is hope, not strategy.

Antifragile startups will not depend on getting things back to normal because they will be built to thrive in the opposite of normal. They will be aggressive go getters who make luck happen for them rather than hope things go their way. It's ruthless, but I loved how Manny was explicit about going to his competitors customer lists and cold calling those people to sell them Outreach.

Antifragile startups will not depend on venture money for survival, because they know that the capital markets may behave irrationally and unpredictably. They will use money as a strategic weapon when it's available, but not the lack of it as a crutch to hide from facing and embracing new realities.

Third, antifragile teams adapt and get stronger. These are the startups that will find new business models, value propositions and strategies that could not have worked before the pandemic, but are now new and compelling opportunities to create new winning businesses.

When Outreach's original idea wasn't working and the team was about to give up on the business, you might remember how Manny, almost out of money, found signal in the data about the chance to pivot into sales engagement. He was willing to turn on a dime and rapidly transitioned to the new opportunity while convincing the team to go all in with him.

So what does this mean for you? If you're a startup founder, you and your team should talk about what it means to be antifragile.

First, consider the question, where can I leverage gathering waves of chaos? This might mean considering new value propositions or new ways to deliver value in the changed economy. New customers will be desperate about new things for new reasons and this is where antifragile startups can shine. It might require you to turn on a dime rather than go straight forward with your current roadmap, but, in some cases, you might find the trade off is worth it.

Second, ask yourself, where am I being too passive when there is an opportunity to seize the initiative, where you can be more assertive and taking control of your destiny?

Third, make sure you question the security of your current business model. Where is my startup fragile? For instance, startups are more fragile when they have shorter runways and less fragile when they're profitable.

Teams are most fragile when they have egocentric conflict. Teams are antifragile when they are the antithesis of egocentric, when they can go to hell and back together.

Startups with fragile customers are more at risk than startups with prosperous customers. Always keep in mind, uncertainty can be inspiring if you have the right mindset and show the right leadership, rare events are the crucible of the outlier companies of tomorrow.

After all, if an antifragile team is going to build a legendary company in this economy, if greatness is destined to emerge from these times, why not your team?