## What is a startup? When it was early days with Pipehaul, I decided to call it an early stage venture instead of Startup. The framing was a double whammy to help us believe in building and adopt practices that are not fast-paced at all times. The motivation behind using the framing route is to ensure I don’t forget the problem space in which we were trying to solve. ‘Startup’ is a fascinating word and, like all words that become popular, it is overused. Other such examples in venture capital funded world is product Market fit, scalable, consumer focused and product company. Naval has an apt definition when it comes to defining them. This was also back in the days when he was an operator. The current avatar of him is quite contrasting. Back when he wrote Venture hacks, he was looking to communicate from a sense of clarity with simple articulation.  A startup according to him is a company that is yet to figure out what is its product, who its customers and how it will make money. Once it does, it no longer remains to be a startup. This captures the sentiment and output of a startup yet fails to articulate the nuance of outcome. While naval addresses the output with his definition. The other part is about inputs. Both are responsible for the end outcome. ### Inputs Startups in the process of solving a problem become a productive learning system. There are 3 types of learnings that take place. Exploration, experiential and experimental. Exploration is about postulating the problem statement and devising an approach for solving them. Experiential is mostly about the exposure of executing your approach. And, experimental is the study of observations/results from ones execution. For example, when we began Pipehaul. It was to address the logistical inefficiencies in produce supply chains,but as we kept exploring, the approach led us to Subjimandi.app. Moving on to the part of executing the model of graded produce, our experience taught us about the overall market dynamics and stakeholders of the agri-trade. Lastly, when we experimented with buying and selling grade wise, we analysed the results and kept bettering our value proposition to both producer and buyers. A startup is that stage of venture where the nature of its existence primed towards maximum learning for each of its members. This will have far outreaching outcomes as they find success and become a fast-growing business. --- #### Words Matter I took the long-winded way of defining a word like Startup to emphasise the nature of using the right words. In the digital economy, the prospect of words becoming cheaper couldn’t be more relevant. It means using the apt word becomes much more important to differentiate yourself from the rest. “Actions speak louder than words”, that's the wisdom that is imparted on us pretty young. You are told to execute and let the action speak for itself. In a chaotic world filled with words (information), your actions speaking for itself will be similar to keeping your eyes open or closed in a dark room. Actions are the output. It forms a part of the outcome, not the cause for the outcome. Instead, I believe the “Words define the actions better” and clearly using the apt word helps your actions further. #### Concluding thought: Bringing it to a close and stitching both the strands discussed in the post. The prospect of using words to define your actions becomes critical in a startup as you are aligning team members, potential customers and overall market to see value in the problem that you are addressing with your solution. Building something new is table stakes in the current environment of digital economy. The edge comes when you can coherently communicate the very existence of your venture. An analogy of sports will drive home the point that I am trying to make. In tennis, hitting the ball with the racket involves positioning, technique and follow through. While the first is about reading the situation to position oneself. The second one is about the tacit knowledge that comes with practice. And, last is about executing the shot with proper follow-through at the moment to keep the ball in the court. The first two are the inputs and the last one is the output. Every tennis player will not discount the importance of one for the other. This is precisely why, as we focus on the output, through actions of the startup. Words form the basis of input in the frist place. **** Original Published Date: 15-04-2023 Tags : #published #ontheside #startups