Growing trees & startups
Life is full of opportunities that others have created. Branches of someone’s choice of heart.
What if out of all those many roads, we can’t seem to find the right road for ourselves?
What if we are meant to plant our own tree instead of leaning on someone’s branch.
Sometimes, we find it intimidating to go off the well-known path, but do we feel the same about missing the chance to create our own?
Until I have reached the age 28, I have always had a decent work. I was a “joiner” and I felt it was the right thing to do. However, at that year, I felt the need to plant my own seed, establish my first startup.
Since then, I have kept planting seeds, creating my own well-known road out of the unknowns of life. Now I know that for me it’s growing an opportunity rather than joining one.
Olive orchard
I have never been a “great” farmer. Yet I have always loved it when I got to doing it. Each year you need to cut the branches short so the sunlight would come and touch all the leaves, let the flowers bloom, the bees to taste their flavors and in turn make the flower an olive.
At the end of the year the olives are showing up and it’s time to collect the goods of your work. The last part where you get the olives and eat them is what most of us are doing when he or she goes to the nearest supermarket. Yet when you eat those goods you made, you don’t taste an olive, you taste a creation.
Seeds of creation
Trees are just like entrepreneurs. They both need the right environmental terms to succeed.
Yet, I always wonder, what are the right terms?
Capital raising, acceleration programs, strategic partner (market leader)
When we raise capital we give up equity. Giving our equity means less control. Then, we do it again while reaching (if we are lucky) round A, B, C and so forth. If at the end of the day we own 10% of our company, do we own the tree or the branch? Do we set the terms? Is it a better tree?
Does capital raising helps growing your tree or theirs?
Acceleration is what startups are all about. Growing fast, growing big.
Do you know what happens to a tree if you give it too much water too fast? It harms the tree. Each tree needs the right amount in the right paste to grow. The right amount of water, sun, vitamins, wind, temperature, moisture.
My thoughts are, that maybe instead of acceleration the high tech industry should teach sustainability.
Market leaders — the biggest trees in the forest. They consume a lot of ingredients, water and sun from the small and young trees around them. They can choose to let this seed have it vitamins (customers?), or another it’s water. Seed investment of a market leader, is it a seed of a new tree or starting of a new branch on the market leader tree?
One thing is for sure, one can’t grow by himself. You need the right terms and the right people or companies around you to allow you, to just be.
Me? I am a grower, I want the tree, not the branch. Feel free to share your thoughts on my LinkedIn post
