Intensity FTW
There’s always a lot of chat in VC and Startupland about the so-called 9-9-6 working pattern. The debate usually swings between “It’s outdated hustle porn” for the naysayers, and “It’s the reason China and the U.S. win” for the believers.
I come down on the latter side. Building a company is so hard and competitive that I simply don’t believe you can do it without being all in. It’s even more acute when the space you’re building in is either/both (i) novel; and/or (ii) competitive.
I think why it matters breaks down into a few key reasons:
- Yardage: Part of it is simply yards run - if you’re working harder, pushing harder, doing more, than your competitors, over time I believe you will cover more ground and get further.
- Speed of experimentation: Fundamentally, startups are about running as many experiments as you can in the least resource intensive way possible. The faster you move, the more experiments you can run.
- Learning velocity: Linked to the above two, if you experiment more and cover more ground, assuming equivalent innate intelligence, you will learn more quickly.
- A-Player Magnetism: To quote Steve Jobs: “A players attract A players. B players attract C players.” If you establish a company culture where everyone is unbelievably intense, you’ll attract the fittest - not necessarily the “best”, but the fittest for the brutal but rewarding environment that is startup building.
I feel more strongly on this than ever as the U.K. and Europe stare down the barrel of extremely tough macro and slowing productivity. We have to shift harder, faster, further. And that starts with being transparent about what it takes.