Abstract
The opening chapter introduces the “venture craftsman” as a model for success in startup incubation. Like explorers, venture craftsmen wander through uncharted markets and bring back precious discoveries in the hope of generating riches for themselves and their backers. And, like artisans, they take time to tinker, shaping each element of their startup business with exacting attention to detail and excellence. They fashion skills, tools and other specialized assets that help them create businesses of enduring value.
The chapter also introduces the three skills supporting a startup founder’s journey through this often hidden “stealth” phase of a startup’s life: wandering, conversing, tinkering. At the heart of each lies improvisation, the real-time fusion of thought and action, design and execution. These improvisational skills help overcome the limitations of scientifically based “lean” methodologies for creating startups. They provide wobbly, nascent ventures with stability and conserve momentum during early-stage incubation. Like the gimbals of a gyroscope, they counter the entropy born of change, conflict, and confusion, which continuously push young enterprises toward chaos.
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Notes
- 1.
Entrepreneurs who preserve control receive on average $3.7 million more when the company is sold. See Broughman, B J, and Fried, J, “Renegotiation of Cash Flow Rights in the Sale of VC-Backed Firms,” June 23, 2008, Journal of Financial Economics (JFE), Vol. 95, 384–399, UC Berkeley Public Law Research Paper No. 956243.
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In 1676, long before modern-day crowdsourcing contests, “the British Parliament declared that navigation was the greatest scientific problem of the age and in 1714 offered a substantial financial prize for the solution to finding longitude … [spurring] the development of the marine chronometer, the lunar distance method and the invention of the octant after 1730.” (Wikipedia, Commercial Revolution).
- 5.
Lal, D (2006), Reviving the Invisible Hand, Princeton University Press, p. 196.
- 6.
Women, of course, worked as artisans throughout the ages, with many achieving mastery in their trades. The same can be said of modern female entrepreneurs. Without wishing to ignore this important fact, I nonetheless prefer to use the term “craftsman” rather than the more awkward “craftsperson.” I hope my readers—and my wife and three daughters—will forgive me.
- 7.
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Known as Klondike spaces among systems analysts. See: Perkins, D (1994), “Creativity: Beyond the Darwinian Paradigm.” In M A Boden (Ed.), Dimensions of Creativity, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
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The infiltration of software into many products and services—from robotics and automobiles to toys and banking—has exacerbated this tendency over the past 30 years.
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- 27.
Both Friendster and MySpace were eventually bought and restarted by new owners.
- 28.
Between 2007 and 2014, Monster’s market capitalization declined 93%.
- 29.
Max, S (2013), “Entrepreneurs Help Build Startups by the Batch,” The New York Times, May 27, 2013 (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/entrepreneurs-help-build-start-ups-by-the-batch/).
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Kauffman Foundation , “The Return of Business Creation,” July 2013 (http://www.kauffman.org/~/media/kauffman_org/research%20reports%20and%20covers/2013/07/firmformationandeconomicgrowthjuly2013.pdf).
- 31.
Ventures being incubated—those less than a year old and employing one to four people—created one million jobs per year, on average, over the past three decades, twice the rate of businesses with five to nine employees.
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Kornel, A. (2018). Ode to the Venture Craftsman. In: Spinning into Control. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51356-4_1
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