The Perils of Prudence

In startups, speed reduces risk.

In many ways, this is deeply, deeply counterintuitive. It goes against the physical intuition we've all acquired from youthful scraped knees and twisted ankles. It goes against the conventional wisdom drummed into us at school. It goes against the operating principles beloved of large organizations—diversify your efforts, hedge all risks, operate redundantly, work to a cadence.

These principles don’t apply to early-stage companies. They’re not just irrelevant, they’re anti-patterns that will actively hurt founders’ efforts. Speed is the single best way to de-risk a startup. Many people in tech know this in theory, but truly believing and acting on it is much harder.

To help remind you of this lesson, let’s peek into the annals of history—namely, the race to the South Pole in the early 1900’s. It’s a tale of two polar expedition parties, one focused on speed and the other on caution. As you might expect, one story ends in victory, and the other in tragedy. Consider it an apt analogy. 

The worst journey in the world

In 1911, two different parties set out to reach the South Pole. One was led by British Royal Navy officer Robert Falcon Scott. He believed there was safety in numbers: that a large, slow-moving convoy faced fewer risks than a small and agile team. 

He thought the success of such a convoy depended on perfect adherence to complex plans, often written down weeks or months in advance. He enforced strict Naval discipline and a rigid hierarchy, to ensure there were no deviations from these plans. 

When conditions on the ground belied his assumptions, he refused to change. When things went wrong, as they inevitably did, Scott struggled to course correct.