Startup Buddhism
Board rooms and co-working spaces are the last places you would expect to find useful linkages to Eastern spiritual teachings, beyond perhaps the occasional acknowledgement of activities like mindfulness and yoga in keeping the workforce suitably sedated (and they are a form of sedation - neither are a permanent cure for your existential angst). Although companies pay lip service to the idea that “happy staff are productive staff”, in practice little attention is paid to proactively formulating good behaviours from the most foundational level in individuals within the business.
I believe there are tangible parallels, and that a leader could derive practical benefit for their company from a basic understanding of some of the concepts within these teachings. The reason for my belief is that the Buddha’s teachings, at the most basic level, provide an analysis of the self-limiting behaviours of the individual; whilst, inversely, a company is a collection of individuals acting in a unified manner in order to reach a shared objective, requiring scale and appropriate group dynamics.
For this exploration, let us assume that the Buddhist tradition is historically correct and recorded absolute truth; and that Siddhattha Gautama’s realisations were a full observation and communication of his transcendence of samsara.
The step before rebirth in this cycle of reincarnation is recognised as Upādāna, a form of clinging and attachment. This is split into four connected categories:
Sense of self (the most deeply embedded elements of the ego)
Dogma
Habit
Physical desires (the most direct dopamine hit)
How might these types of attachment govern the behaviours of the average person in the modern world? What about someone who is working in a fast-paced, high growth startup company like the ones my friends work at? This is a high stress environment typically staffed by high performing individuals, with challenges pronounced in a manner that a regular business tends not to face. It wouldn’t take anybody very long to work out where these four types of attachment appear in their own life. Think. That Friday night beer that just takes the edge off? That repressed political view? That mother’s day Facebook post about your mother who doesn’t have Facebook? What are they truly fulfilling?
From an investor perspective, what would be a really bad (but commonly heard) pitch opening? It would go something like: “I want to be rich enough to retire in my thirties! I was born to be an entrepreneur! The 9 to 5 isn’t for me! I’ve spotted a gap in the market! This is how the people who wrote the textbooks did it!”.
We can see elements of the 4 types of attachment woven into this example statement. Somebody whose primary driver is quick money will have a rough time on a startup journey. The reason the phrase “Money can’t buy you happiness” is a cliché is because it is so often proved to be true. Given that most businesses fail, you will likely never achieve the money; and even if you do, the feeling of happiness it brings you will be more short-lived than you imagine. This isn’t to say money is bad - at all. This commonly spouted puerile view is a whole other discussion of its own…
In small teams, the sense of near-anonymity which imbues those working in large corporate organisations doesn’t exist. There is nowhere to hide when there are only 10 people in the company and you’re in the Monday morning standup meeting. This can be a good thing for keeping the team working hard, but it can equally give rise to unhelpful behaviours that manifest as a result of the naturally occurring dominance hierarchies of our social situations (à la Jordan Peterson). We have all bore witness to a proverbial pissing contest between two people trying to be the ‘alpha’ in a given setting, hence why the graveyard of startups that fell victim to quarreling staff is more of a necropolis.
Clinging to the idea of a perpetual, static, unevolving ‘self’ is a fallacy - not just in the Buddhist spiritual tradition and not just in the context of the noxious ‘self help’ cloud engulfing our culture - but in the quest of building a successful enterprise. The founder becomes a fundamentally different individual as they navigate the business from 2 employees to 200, to 2000. The pivots and product iterations ensure the business model and the products and services offered are fundamentally different too. How many startups have died because firing somebody quickly was too much of a challenge for a founder / CEO whose image of their ‘self’ was ‘too nice’? Or perhaps they continued burning cash through stubborn adherence to the original ‘vision’ of the company.
All of these hurdles detract from the company’s objective of realising truth. In the context of business, this could be equated to product market fit - a state where impermanence is embraced, and ignorance and desire are kept in check.
To conclude and keep with tradition, here’s some Nietzsche (by way of Thiel) that I think is relevant:
“Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.”
