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I've tried starting a few companies and it eventually became clear that without significant revenue coming in, the cofounders need to be either particularly mot

I've tried starting a few companies and it eventually became clear that without significant revenue coming in, the cofounders need to be either particularly motivated by the vision and capable of putting aside personal politics to achieve it, the former being easier to achieve than the latter, immediate personal goals are going to slowly take priority and your startup will die a sad death. Once revenue is there, everybody can buy in. The enterprise does not need to actually be profitable or even have a workable plan to profit or exit or anything like that. What it needs is revenue. Someone has to be the pig that gets the enterprise from zero to revenue. Smart pigs become politically-adroit capitalist "pigs", dumb pigs get slaughtered. But someone has to take the lead, and the rest have to follow. Uniting collectively behind a vision seems to be one of those things humans just can't do very well. They can unite behind a person with a vision, but not the vision by itself. Workers cooperatives were a big thing back in the heady days of the early 1800s. Most died out fairly quickly but a few caught on and lasted for a good while. The story was the same throughout, the cooperative eventually ossified and could not retain the magic in the face of broader economic change.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Workers cooperatives were a big thing back in the heady days of the early 1800s. Most died out fairly quickly but a few caught on and lasted for a good while. The story was the same throughout, the cooperative eventually ossified and could not retain the magic in the face of broader economic change. Ossification and failure to remain vital in the face of changing market conditions is a pervasive problem for businesses that become established, not something special affecting labor coops. OTOH, Mondragon still seems to be going strong.
ci5er 10y ago
> Uniting collectively behind a vision seems to be one of those things humans just can't do very well. They can unite behind a person with a vision, but not the vision by itself. That's insightful. Can you speak more about this?
- vinceguidry 10y ago
  Sure. A vision is an imagining of what the future might hold. If you don't have someone keeping the vision, a visionary, calling the shots and resolving conflicts, then the vision gets diluted amongst all the different people believing in it. It's a game of telephone only the end result is the livelihoods of everyone involved. It's easy to lose faith in. Whereas if you have a person where the buck stops, vision-wise, then you don't have to know every little detail, you can just trust the person to make everything work. Most people aren't very imaginative, they want to deal with their own stuff and leave the kingdom-building to someone else. It's just enough for them to keep the faith. Picture it this way. Say you have a plan for a better world. If the plan is, "hope X will happen," then that's a very different thing to believe in than "do X, Y, and Z, and if we do those things right, then A will happen." Both are imagined sequences of events, but one is more concrete than the other. A person in charge of the vision makes the vision that much more concrete than if it's spread out amongst random others.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Workers cooperatives were a big thing back in the heady days of the early 1800s. Most died out fairly quickly but a few caught on and lasted for a good while. The story was the same throughout, the cooperative eventually ossified and could not retain the magic in the face of broader economic change. Ossification and failure to remain vital in the face of changing market conditions is a pervasive problem for businesses that become established, not something special affecting labor coops. OTOH, Mondragon still seems to be going strong.

ci5er 10y ago

> Uniting collectively behind a vision seems to be one of those things humans just can't do very well. They can unite behind a person with a vision, but not the vision by itself. That's insightful. Can you speak more about this?

vinceguidry 10y ago
Sure. A vision is an imagining of what the future might hold. If you don't have someone keeping the vision, a visionary, calling the shots and resolving conflicts, then the vision gets diluted amongst all the different people believing in it. It's a game of telephone only the end result is the livelihoods of everyone involved. It's easy to lose faith in. Whereas if you have a person where the buck stops, vision-wise, then you don't have to know every little detail, you can just trust the person to make everything work. Most people aren't very imaginative, they want to deal with their own stuff and leave the kingdom-building to someone else. It's just enough for them to keep the faith. Picture it this way. Say you have a plan for a better world. If the plan is, "hope X will happen," then that's a very different thing to believe in than "do X, Y, and Z, and if we do those things right, then A will happen." Both are imagined sequences of events, but one is more concrete than the other. A person in charge of the vision makes the vision that much more concrete than if it's spread out amongst random others.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]