What Are Your Startup’s Philosophies?

Ever since I got interested in starting a company in high school, I started to notice everyone and their brother talking about creating a mission statement. But what about creating a company’s philosophies? As I read more books about entrepreneurship , I was really surprised at (and disappointed by) how few mentioned philosophies of the companies that were started. Aren’t philosophies are more important than mission statements!?

Let me explain what I mean by that a bit further - at least, in how I divide the terms: your mission describes what you want [your business] to strive to achieve. Your philosophies describe how you want to achieve this mission. There are some other words I’ve seen for what I’m calling philosophy - like ‘values’, 'mantras’, and 'culture’. But what I hate about the latter three is they don’t sound intentionally created: values sound fake, and culture sounds like maybe it just happens over time. Philosophies should be created in companies, by the founders. Obviously, they should be evolved, as well, but not just dismissed as something that forms on its own. In great companies, they should be woven together from the very beginning - at least in action, if not in words as well.

Of course, a business need both a mission and accompanying philosophies; if they are well-representative and specific, they are incredibly polarizing during formative stages of businesses. They inform people whether or not they will be a fit in the organization: should someone join, should they stay, or should they leave? Or for Jim Collins fans: it gets the right people on the bus, and keeps the wrong ones off it.

BUT. Philosophies, I believe, are actually more important than just mission statements - especially in the long run. Mission statements are typically polarizing in a very intellectual sense - can everyone agree that the types of products we are building, and the industry we are in is highly interesting? On the other hand, philosophies are emotionally polarizing - can everyone agree that the principles we use to work interpersonally (interact, reward, argue, empower), build products, and choose new endeavors are the right ones? As a company grows older, it will grow from one product or service, to many products or services (or at least many features, but that’s just terminology). What was intellectually polarizing as a single product then becomes increasingly generalized over many products. With many people working on many different things, the main thing left that can link people together are the philosophies. And such is as it should be - businesses are about people working together, selling to other people at the end of the day.

Real Examples

Enough with the abstract philosophizing about philosophies: let’s take a look at what this means with some real companies.

Google

Mission: To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful

Important Philosophies: Don’t be evil, treat engineers well, ideas come from anywhere, drive by the data …

First, I have to disclose that I worked here, loved it, and learned a lot - and that I analyzed it the most; and I think it can be improved (as with all things). Google’s mission statement was powerful - but as Google expands, the only polarizing aspect of it between it’s 16,000+ people is probably that “we’re in the business of information” - a topic tons of people are incredibly interested in. More interesting is its philosophies. I can tell you from first-hand experience that Google, day in and day out, lives by these philosophies - older employees used to correct ideas all the time, labeling them as probably evil. Also, engineers got the coolest toys and nicest buildings (when maybe other employees wouldn’t). There are also potential side effects to these philosophies: 'don’t be evil’ isn’t necessarily a proactive statement to do great things, and employees who aren’t engineers can feel less important (feeling more like numbers than people), etc. I say this just to show how the impact of choosing philosophies drives how the company is run, person to person, day to day.

Apple

Mission: ? To build revolutionary computers and devices?

Important Philosophies: Make high quality products that are the pinnacle of art, form, and function; a.k.a. the pinnacle of design.

I have to admit, that after being a Mac lover since the age of 6 or 7, I never really figured out what their mission was - it always seemed like more of a philosophy inspired by Steve. I can’t say I know much about the interpersonal philosophies of Apple, but anytime Steve Jobs was involved, the driving force had to do with creating products that worked, and were beautiful. He did, after all, say that it was much more amazing when people became artists/musicians than bankers. And such a philosophy is incredibly polarizing - even to Apple’s die-hard customers.

Microsoft

Mission: To build software that… (does it matter)?

Important Philosophies: Winning.

I don’t have any first-hand data, of course, but it’s pretty apparent that Microsoft is out to win, and that philosophy is applied to how they do business, and how people in the company interact with each other. I happily admit that a few products are great - like the XBox, and Visual Studio in its heyday - but it certainly seems like owning the products with the most market share in their market is of more importance than quality. And I’ve heard the politics that result from this philosophy (among other philosophies) can be pretty intense.

37Signals

Mission: To build simple - yet effective - productivity software.

Important Philosophies: Yikes! They have so many it fills a book . The best? Super Simple Software, User Interface-User Interface-User Interface, hire only when it hurts, agility

It seems like 37Signals was actually started because of philosophies , that described how people would work together and the types of products & work they believe in. They’re great - I don’t actually agree with all of them, and you know what? That means they did an incredible job of creating them: I was able to figure out that I’m probably not the right person to work there!

FogCreek Software

Mission: Create software for tech companies

Important Philosophies: Build the company where the best software developers in the world want to work.

Like 37Signals, FogCreek seems more like a philosphy-driven business than most other companies - only directed towards people rather than products. Joel has been described as the programmer’s programmer because of his philosophies, so I won’t add any more color except to say that you can see the power of such a driving force, in a long-term business.

Hewlett Packard

Mission: Focus on the philosophy to build technology products

Important Philosophies: The HP Way , Employee Decisions based on Diversity

You can’t talk about philosophies without mentioning the HP Way - because not only was it great, but it shows how hard it is to stay true to (even) great philosophies. If Joel of FogCreek is the programmer’s programmer; the philosopher of programmers, then Carly Fiorina is the leader’s leader; the philosopher of leaders. While she was CEO, Carly helped steer HP back on track by focusing the employees on the values to make great strategic decisions. (If you ever get a chance to hear her speak, do so.)

Southwest Airlines

Mission: Provide Cheap Airfares to fill every plane.

Important Philosophies: People, People People - take care of [all] employees, and they’ll take care of customers

Although it seems they’ve lost their risk-taking heritage a bit, Southwest is a company I couldn’t resist to put down here because their philosophies for interpersonal matters is absolutely golden - they revolutionized an industry filled with unhappy and unequal employees. There’s a lot of LUV at Southwest, and it didn’t happen by accident. While there’s just too much to say about it, there are so many ways employees are emotionally rewarded, kept in high spirits, and prevented from treating others by their positional status.

Choosing Your Philosophies

There are so many more companies, like Facebook, Nordstroms, Starbucks and more, that I think are great examples, but I’ll leave them as exercises for the reader. Now let’s turn to how to choose your startup’s philosophies. Unfortunately, I certainly do not have any cut-n-dry answers you were hoping for ;-). But the important part, is that you start thinking about the philosophies sooner rather than later - they will affect how well your business matures, particularly in the people department. And don’t even think about going through any exponential employee growth without having them practiced by everyone in the company.

But first, at the risk of sounding like an old grade-school teacher, there are no right or wrong philosophies, in and of themselves. Even better, there is no penalty for copying other’s philosophies - to a point. The only thing that should hold true, is that it has to accurately represent the actions and beliefs of you and your teammates. Whereas you might be tempted to choose something that sounds great, the more real you can be about yourselves and what you can grow to become, the better you will be at finding the right talent and the right customers.

For ThriveSmart , we’ve had a lot of discussions/arguments about what makes us tick. We’ll have many more. What we know now is that we’re going to borrow some from Southwest’s book and focus on the development/empowerment/friendships/emotions/collaboration of each & all employees team members (programmers have feelings too, along with all the other people!). We also have come to realize how much we each care about the quality, beauty, usefulness, and impact of our products - similar to Apple and 37Signals. And we each have a love for learning from & teaching each other.

One of my personal passions is to help create a haven for people who want to be, and want to improve their entrepreneurial, people, and technical abilities. To help empower others to solve important problems. We’ll see if those become integrated into the philosophies of ThriveSmart as we continue to talk about it between us co-founders… as pie-in-the-sky as they might sound.

I wanted to give you some insight into how we’re creating ours, because I wanted to let others know that it takes many months, probably years to perfect and put them into action. But the important thing is to start thinking, start talking, and start acting on it now. Besides, it’s fun. Happy arguing!

As usual, I love discussion, comments, and emails - contact me !