A Celebration Worth Celebrating
It’s been almost eight years since we kicked off our annual Top 5 Startups awards.
The idea for the first event started after a conversation with some folks in the entrepreneur ecosystem. We were sitting at the Workshop17 Watershed precinct in Cape Town.
I asked a simple question, “How do you celebrate success?”
My startup-focused friends looked at me with puzzled expressions.
“What do you mean, ‘celebrate’?”
I mean… how. do. you. celebrate?
In other words: When something goes right in your business, what do you do to mark the occasion as worthy of celebrating?
“Ah, I see what you mean. No, we don’t have time for that stuff!” was the response.
One of them stared at me as if I was from a hippie cult. I realised that, for him, the existential threat of running a business was far too dire to be involved in a mundane activity like success recognition.
I realised that many of the crazy ones in the entrepreneur ecosystem never stop running on their treadmills.
They work throughout the year and fall in an exhausted heap around the 24th of December.
Then, they dust themselves off on the 3rd of January to start all over again.
I know of one successful South African entrepreneur who sold his company a few years ago. He created an incredible company but had no interest in celebrating along the way. His success metric was absolute control.
He would regularly tweet on Sunday evenings stuff like: “Inbox zero! I’m already ahead and the week hasn’t even started!”
This, while the rest of us were watching movies with dogs/kids/partners/pizza.
The founder of Dell Computers, Michael Dell, once said of his successes, “Celebrate for a nanosecond. Then move on.”
Another CEO who I mentored for a year convinced his team of four to work seven days a week for the first two years of their startup.
When I asked him why he didn’t take breaks, he told me, “The other guys are resting on weekends. This gives us an unfair advantage.”
This is admirable. Maybe.
Personally, I’m not one of those ‘inbox zero / hustle-porn’ type of folks. I actually believe that stopping to breathe and reflect is important. Turns out, the good peeps at Endeavor and Harvard Business Review agree.
Sure, working crazy hard is necessary if we’re to succeed.
However, just how crazy hard is reasonable?
Eric Schmidt, erstwhile CEO of Google recently participated in a controversial interview (* thanks Louis for sharing).
The conversation was both fascinating and hilarious. At one point, Schmidt commented on his former employer a beautifully passive-aggressive quip, “Google has decided that three-day-weeks are more important than winning.”
Schmidt also remarked on the race between leading countries for economic domination. He mentioned that the countries that had the highest populations and whose culture encouraged hard work would win.
Read, China, India and Taiwan.
Louis and I had an enthusiastic debate about this. Personally, I don’t believe that China will ‘win’. Sure, their economies will surge because of numbers and sheer grind - and a solid skill for making copycat products at scale. At the same time, I feel that countries that successfully foster a culture of innovation will have an outsize impact compared to their population size.
In my view, a strong foundation of creativity, combined with hard work and collaboration, will be the fastest movers in the upcoming AI era.
Read, Estonia, Israel, Sweden, Denmark and (yes, I’m an idealist) South Africa.
This brings me back to celebrating success.
Part of fostering an innovation culture is casting a lens on the people doing the crazy hard work required to change the world for the better.
This is why we created Top 5 Startups.
In our first year, we only had a few dozen entries. One of those baby businesses back then included a cocky fintech startup called Yoco. Another was a pugnacious service platform Sweepsouth. Yet another was a fast-moving micro-lender JUMO.
These companies were Top 5 winners in 2017. They have grown to be some of the best-known startups in the SA landscape.
In 2024, who will be the next Yoco, Sweepsouth or JUMO?
Or, Aerobotics, DataProphet, LifeQ, DigsCOnnect, Lula, Mama Money, Bathu, Easy Equities, Yebo Fresh, Livestock Wealth, Valenture Institute, Franc or Everlectric?
All of the above startups have attained Top 5 Startup status.
What about your business?
What are you waiting for?
It’s time to celebrate.
Peace.
