Startup history is short

In one generation a company can be born, live its life and die.

A startup that was elastic becomes inelastic, what was durable becomes fragile, and then back again. For a company to maintain a leadership position it has to be willing to fall behind the pack and then regain it’s lead.

At its most extreme this is the ‘Microsoft Model’.

You can grow organically but that takes time and a high pain tolerance, or you can buy your way to an industry leadership position in a market segment. This is faster, it may cost more money yup front but you know what you’re buying. A startup can be built, to be acquired, so that Microsoft advances into market leadership.

Sporting events are a shorter history.

It’s everything that tech history is, but compressed into a much smaller space.

Team sports are difficult to do a postmortem on because of the complexity and they are games of compounding mistakes. 

Combat sports are different, the athletes are the truest startup in a sporting environment.

Conor McGregor is a top athlete and superstar in Mixed Martial Arts. He has transformed the character and form of combat to frictionless movements.

For the time being, in his winning cycle, he is a leading philosopher and his rhetoric is mixed martial arts. He explains that art and science are not co-equal. The art is more important.

• The art is intellectual, fluid body movements, an adaptive style and the operating principles of combat
• The science are his weapons, feet, hands, knees, elbows, wrestling

Straight lines between startups and Conor

This last week McGregor won his contest in a record 13 seconds. His opponent, Jose Aldo, had been the champion and unbeaten for 10 years. He was the empire and McGregor was the startup on his periphery. The startup won.

These were Conor McGregor quotes after the fight.

• Precision beats power. Timing beats speed
• When you see it, and you have the courage enough to speak it, it will happen
• To the naked eye it was 13 seconds, but to my team and my family it has been a lifetime of work to get to that 13 seconds

The End?