Stop Saying You're A StartUp

I’m getting tired of the term ‘start-up’ because I’m seeing a lot of people use it to cage themselves. If the phrase is used to describe your given situation (you just started up), then cool. After bumping into a ten year old startup that’s still ‘bootstrapping’ this weekend.. I’ve come to realize there’s a serious problem.

I’ve learned that calling yourself a start-up for too long is a chic way to grant yourself permission to lose. It lodges you at the beginning of the track well after the gun has been fired, and makes you feel as if the finish line is further, and your race more patient than it really is. It takes away what’s scary about starting a company - a suffocating anxiety of failure that drives you to fight like hell. The uncompromising choke of your own nerves that triggers the rest of your instincts to enter do-or-die mode. Here’s the thing..

When you’re not aware that failure is about to kick your ass, failure will kick your ass while you’re unaware. Nobody’s waiting for you to start running if you don’t realize this is a race. Calling yourself a start-up for a lot of people makes it okay for them to finish the year without solving a single problem for anyone. Without servicing anyone, without marking a single sale in their book, or producing results. It’s the feeling of seeing 0 - 0 on the scoreboard at the beginning of a game. It’s the feeling at the beginning of the race, when the shot is fired and you’re starting at the back of the pack.

So you start a company. You’re at the start of the race, that’s fine, but the person ahead of you is focusing on the end of the race. They’re running as if they don’t have time, or an abstract social ‘permission’ to not be ahead because of their circumstance. The idea of having ‘time’ or being at the beginning is scary to them. This is why they’re winning, while for some at the back having time is relief. This is why they’re losing. I feel the ‘startup’ is a delusion prolonged. The bottling of a good feeling. You’re giving it your all, but in order to tap into that thing inside you that's stronger than your all, that thing that the people ahead of you thrive on, you can’t have ‘time’.

Strategic was a start-up on week one. Week two I had bills to pay and the pressure of not delivering made me want to be closer to the ‘end’ than the ‘start’. If I called myself a start up, it gave me the permission to see creating real value for others as a distant goal and that’s not something I couldn’t stomach (or afford according to my apartment complex).. The idea of being at the start scared me, because what I needed was at the end.