When is your startup’s failure your fault?
Saying your startup failed because of macroeconomic conditions is a bit like saying your marriage failed because being married is hard. Yes, but is that really all the analysis you’ve got handy? It can’t all be the business cycle and macroeconomics, right?
Today’s submission to Climate Workers Anonymous is about what to do with macro conditions and the business cycle from within your particular climate tech or carbon dioxide removal company.
One part of it is about offering grace to one another and ourselves. It’s hard to go wrong in over-applying grace. But another part of it is an encouragement to remain counter-cyclical. If everyone is panicking, you be the calm one looking for acquisition and growth opportunities. If the good feelings of the endless summer of expansionary times are being felt by all, you be the cautious one and note that this too shall pass. If you believe what everyone else believes, you will broadly end up in the same place. And if you lead a company, your job isn’t to end up with everyone else (or at least under capitalism as normally played.) So you should have a counter-cyclical default at least as one way of seeing among many.
But for your own sake, it doesn’t need to be the only tool you have. If it is, it’s no longer the millstone as a the tool but a millstone as the sinker around your neck. Having only one cognitive tool and overapplying it is one of the ways one can end up in crackpot territory. Be advised!
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If you’d like submit your anonymous hopes, fears, or experiences to Climate Workers Anonymous, you can use this Tally survey or email climateworkersanonymous[at]protonmail.com, though I believe the Tally survey is more secure. Do not communicate anything you wouldn’t want a hacker to have access to, including an email address that could be linked to you if you email the account on Protonmail.
Will you please share this Climate Workers Anonymous post out with your network? Help this find more folks out there who will love it!
Get full access to Climate Workers Anonymous at climateworkersanonymous.com/subscribe
