Creatives vs. Suits...and associated Egos

There’s a debate. If you’ve ever been part of a business organization, you know it: Creatives think business people are disgusting capitalists who put too many constraints around the free flow of their art/code/writing/whatever. Business people think creatives don’t have any conception for the real world and would be completely adrift in their aimless hippie sea without the navigation of customer wants. Read more to find out the impacts on startups.





An Example: Yesterday, I was at a Memorial Day BBQ. We were celebrating America by listening to a lot of country music, playing flip-cup, and diving down a slip-and-slide. Given that this was a Bay Area gathering, it wouldn’t have been complete without absurdly smart, science-inclined people…So, I was talking to a rocket scientist. Legitimately, she works for NASA and develops satellite technologies. She was thinking about spinning out a business because NASA, as most government agencies, doesn’t realize the market value of some of its developments, leaving a pretty glaring arbitrage opportunity. She said that the opportunity was huge, but when pressed about exact market data, she simply said, “it doesn’t matter, because I know it’s there.” I suggested that she might want a good businessperson to do the research into market dynamics and provide her with a clearer vision of the opportunity. Her response was close to “I don’t need that. A business person’s just gonna mess up my flow, and I can do it better myself.”

Basic Psychology lets us know that people tend to overvalue their own skill sets and undervalue what others bring to the table (see: Illusory Superiority).

Inside startups, these notions of self-worth can prove completely disabling. As anyone familiar with startups will tell you, ‘it’s not the idea that matters, it’s the implementation’. A significant part of implementation is how well a team can work together. What might be an otherwise exceptional idea can get washed away with the tide because of ego-driven disharmony amongst founders. Especially given often uneven distributions of equity, founding teams really ought to keep in check their ideas about themselves as individuals.

It’s simply untrue that one person can do it all. Venture Capitalists, who have boatloads of experience dealing with startups, will say that they invest in complementary teams of people. Very rarely will they invest in a single founder because, no matter how smart that founder is (even if he/she is a rocket scientist), it’s unlikely that person will be able to do it all. If for no other reason, there’s just not enough time in a day to focus on everything at once. Most importantly, there’s a level of detail that only comes from experience, and smart people who have focused on a craft will almost always be able to add value, no matter how smart or capable you yourself are. Even if creatives and suits don’t see eye-to-eye, a working relationship must be maintained to put forward a business.