The 'AntiFragile Founder'

Slowing down to speed up

Nassim Taleb coined the term ‘Antifragility’ to describe systems that not only withstand shocks, volatility, and disorder but actually thrive and improve from them.

In a recent class at HBS with Professor Reza Satchu, the concept of the ‘Antifragile Founder’ was raised.

The idea is that a successful founder grows and improves in moments of shock, volatility, or chaos - as these are very common situations that you encounter as a founder.

I missed this class. I was stuck in bed recovering from a stomach bug that wouldn’t shift. After a week or so of “British ‘stiff upper lip’” with the pain, I eventually ended up in the ER.

The doctors ruled out appendicitis, so I was simply confined to bed rest and the aptly named ‘BRAT’ diet (no, it does not result in spontaneous ‘Apple’ dances à la Charli XCX).

As a solo founder this is the most frustrating experience. I had pitch decks to prepare, potential customer meetings, and sessions with advisors - all had to take a back seat as my body said ‘no’.

I was amazingly lucky to have close friends who rallied round to help me, cooked me comforting food, kept me company, and even proofread pitch decks for me.

My mother, I think, did six rounds of proofreading for me from the other side of the Atlantic.

However, it brought home the fragility of the journey ahead of me - if I stop, at this early stage without a team, the business stops.

This is the kind of ‘single point of failure’ risk that we would have had risk assessments galore to manage in my old corporate job.

The immediate reaction of most of my friends and family when I let them know that I was sick was to ask whether I thought it was stress related.

One of my weaknesses, which I am working on, is that I show my heart on my sleeve - which can be a superpower in building authentic relationships, but also not great when I’m stressed.

Old friends and family have seen this playbook before - I have a pattern of sprint and stop. Building the resilience of a marathon rather than 100m dash is something that I am actively working on while at HBS, and a challenge that I am oddly excited about with the solo-founder journey.

Despite this experience showing my fragility and elements of my leadership style that I will need to develop as I build Create Something Good, it has oddly also shown me that I have the anti-fragility required to excel.

I was forced to ‘slow down to speed up’ - a mantra I used with my team at Serco when we were building the Global Innovation Unit. Sometimes, with certain challenges, despite our urges to just run at the wall full force - we need to slow down, to accelerate in the future. It requires Kahneman’s Type 2 rather than Type 1 thinking - but it can be the most amazing unlock.

First, I was forced to prioritize what was truly important in the short term - a submission for a pitch competition - everything else that wasn’t so time sensitive was pushed. Entrepreneurship is about achieving things greater than the resources you control, so this type of prioritization decision will be a daily occurrence as Create Something Good grows.

Second, I was able to think (while lying in bed) about elements of future business strategy, ideas that had been on the back burner, and reflect on learnings from my private beta that had been running for the past week. My slowing down over the past few days has enabled me to move faster and in a more focussed way over the coming days and weeks - working only on the things that I really need to do so as to move the business forward.

Third, and most important, I saw the beauty of creating meaningful memories in the most mundane moments - as it is often in those times that friendships really blossom.

Friends who forced my location out of me to come see me in the ER, filled up my fridge, or cooked me food and talked for hours. Those moments are the special ones. The voice notes that I recorded into ‘memo’ for the photo prompt you see in this blog reflect the importance of that memory to me, more than the photo alone could do.

I lived my customer problem for myself and the power of the value of my product hit home.

So as I sit back at my normal desk in the Harvard Innovation Labs, before sunrise, I’m ready to speed up again after a few days going very slow.

Indeed, I think I may have developed a new lesson on ‘Antifragility’ despite missing the HBS class:

You have to experience and deeply understand fragility to be able to grow the muscles that you need to be truly ‘Antifragile’.