Life in Acceleration

I think acceleration is probably the only parameter that matters in life. Or at least a pretty important one. It’s what keeps us glued to the surface of the earth after all. You could say it gives the universe order and keeps us grounded - no pun intended. So life in acceleration can be scary but is actually a very natural thing despite being hard to embrace.¹

The jolt

So acceleration is scary and healthy, but it isn’t always clear how to get that initial jolt. This is where accelerators come in, to be your jump cables and set you on your way. We have been in Microsoft Ventures London these past 3 months and cannot recommend the program enough. It is basically a collection of great training sessions, office space, loads of cloud credits and an amazing network of potential clients and investors - all for FREE. Many people we meet are extremely skeptical of the program when we tell them so it is worth clarifying. Microsoft takes no equity, does not require you to use any Microsoft technology Windows/Office/Azure/Lumia/Xbox and has no rights to use/audit/acquire any IP from your software/product. But even if you are not lucky enough to join Microsoft Ventures, there is most certainly an accelerator near you where you can get that initial boost. London has some great ones like Techstars , StartupBootcamp and Seedcamp to name a few.

Avoid failure by focusing on value

There is a myth that accelerators make a startup succeed and people point to funding and success ratios. That is a total lie. The reality is that accelerators can teach you how to avoid failure. It is like learning to drive a car - you could do it on your own but it is a lot safer to learn from someone who already knows how to drive. It doesn’t mean you won’t ever crash, but it does reduce your chances. A lot of this is learning from other people’s mistakes and avoiding obvious start-up pitfalls. There are tomes of books and blogs on the subject but I like to sum it up as:

Only spend time and money on things that give you more time and more money.

Every dollar you spend should return more than a dollar in a finite time horizon - basic unit economics. If your hard work (acceleration) is rewarding you with time and money, it is most likely that you have created something valuable to someone. This could be users paying for your product or VCs funding you because you have a bunch of free users. Once that has happened, it is still up to you to keep up the momemtum and make that acceleration lasting as a sustainable business model.

Growth comes from sustainability

Sustainability is largely about creating something that has not only immediate value (ie. pays the bills) but maintains that value in the long term (ie. pays for retirement). For technology, this “sustained” value is generally a result of network effects. Email is really useful because I can save my messages, search my mail, but really, the more people using email, the more valuable it becomes. Data schemas, algorithms, UI, UX, updates, deployment, dependencies, everything you do and every decision you make needs to follow the same logical reasoning process:

Does this create value, and is this sustainable?

Keeping these two points in mind helps keep life in acceleration a little less scary.