This morning the marketing team at OneDesk attended the Montreal Social Media Breakfast for a smattering of startup based chatter over coffee and sandwiches.
Presented as a conversation with Julien Smith, the fascinating discussion bounced between utilising new platforms and identifying new market sectors before confronting the terrifying engine driving all mortal events: risk.
The startup space is inexorably risky by nature. The potentially huge payoff waiting round the corner for a group of engineers risking their time on a great idea provides the impetus for countless all-night coding sessions, codified as near mythic endurances of caffeine and pizza.
It takes reckless naivety or dogmatic tenacity to rush along in this industry. The risk that such long hours and poor diet may only be for a whimpering pivot and a fizzling out of funding in the end can be real for most. The promise of reward helps many battle through.
But it’s not all about that reward either. The journey along the unknown path, surrounded by people similarly excited to be riding it is rewarding in itself. It’s inspiring, and by constantly challenging ourselves, we grow.
We’re not advocating recklessness with things over which we can have no individual claim to gamble; damaging our ecology or detonating our economy. We’re recognising that in the day to day trenches of adult life it becomes easy to blanket ourselves away from the risk of trying, solely for the fear of failing.
And that’s not healthy either.
So, as we heard at breakfast, we’ve got a lot to learn from when we look at how our kids grow. The fearless little brutes fail and fail again, and we encourage them too so that they can become stronger and more resilient robust individuals.
And there’s no good reason we should stop failing as we ‘grow up’. If anything, we should fail harder.
It’s great to know there’s a community of people on the same page out there to work alongside whilst we’re at it.
Especially over a great breakfast.
p.s. For any readers expecting an in depth analysis of Risk, the board game, we apologise. That post is very important to us, and if Montreal’s rainy weather continues, will no doubt be appearing very soon. Get in touch if you fancy a match!