Against Best Practices | slacker news

Dan Morena, CTO at Upright.com, made the point that every startup was unique and therefore every startup had to find out what was best for it, while ignoring whatever was considered "best practice." I wrote what he told me here:

https://respectfulleadership.substack.com/p/dan-morena-is-a-...

My summary of his idea:

No army has ever conquered a country. An army conquers this muddy ditch over here, that open wheat field over there and then the adjoining farm buildings. It conquers that copse of lush oak trees next to the large outcropping of granite rocks. An army seizes that grassy hill top, it digs in on the west side of this particular fast flowing river, it gains control over the 12 story gray and red brick downtown office building, fighting room to room. If you are watching from a great distance, you might think that an army has conquered a country, but if you listen to the people who are involved in the struggle, then you are aware how much "a country" is an abstraction. The real work is made up of specifics: buildings, roads, trees, ditches, rivers, bushes, rocks, fields, houses. When a person talks in abstractions, it only shows how little they know. The people who have meaningful information talk about specifics.

Likewise, no one builds a startup. Instead, you build your startup, and your startup is completely unique, and possesses features that no other startup will ever have. Your success will depend on adapting to those attributes that make it unique.

> If you are watching from a great distance, you might think that an army has conquered a country, but if you listen to the people who are involved in the struggle, then you are aware how much "a country" is an abstraction.

Most things of any value are abstractions. You take a country by persuading everyone you've taken a country, the implementation details of that argument might involve some grassy hill tops, some fields and farm buildings, but its absolutely not the case that an army needs to control every field and every grassy hill top that makes up "a country" in order to take it. The abstraction is different to the sum of its specific parts.

If you try to invade a country by invading every concrete bit of it, you'll either fail to take it or have nothing of value at the end (i.e fail in your objective). The only reason it has ever been useful or even possible to invade countries is because countries are abstractions and it's the abstraction that is important.

> The real work is made up of specifics: buildings, roads, trees, ditches, rivers, bushes, rocks, fields, houses.

Specifics are important - failing to execute on specifics dooms any steps you might make to help achieve your objective, but if all you see is specifics you won't be able to come up with a coherent objective or choose a path that would stand a chance of getting you there.