September | 2012 | Blue Atoll Consulting

Startup = Gazelle. Fallacious analogy?

A while back I posted about the fallacious analogy between a gazelle and a cheetah on my personal blog. It seems apt enough to re-post here.

An oft-quoted statement that I’ve heard about startups says:

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or gazelle – when the sun comes up, you’d better be running. Read More →

What’s good for the goose isn’t good for a startup

The mind of the startup specialist works differently from that of the traditional CEO or employee of a medium or large enterprise. A serial entrepreneur or startup specialist thrives on the edge of uncertainty, balks at the shackles of orthodox structures and constantly sweeps the horizon for new challenges to tackle and fresh problems to troubleshoot. The fabric of a startup is homologous to the mindset of a startup specialist; its people, their tenacious independence, the optimally efficient processes and the lean, mean agility reflect the nature of a serial entrepreneur. Read More →