A day at the circus

I was at an event recently.

The last few years have shown us that the arrogant, ‘I will take over the world’ founder… didn’t

It was a good event.

I had a good time and had some great conversations and I have deliberately allowed time between the event and this publication to pass because the comedy I am about to describe has nothing to do with the event itself.

This sort of thing happens at events everywhere but, even more importantly, it happens in offices everywhere.

It happens in our industry all the time.

And it goes like this.

In a small, enclosed space while waiting for something, a group of people are chatting using outdoor voices, oblivious to the fact that others are there… and some of us are taking notes.

And what they say is ‘look at me and how awesome I am’.

Largely.

But they do so by also playing bro cliché bingo with reckless abandon.

“I built a super-app in a year,” says one bro. “I bootstrapped and we are not quite live yet but it’s a super-app and its awesome. It took a year yeah. It would have been faster but what we do is super interesting and it took a while you see because in the beginning nobody understood the concept. It was too hard for people. Ahead of its time, man.”

Like that’s a good thing.

“Where are you based, bro?” says another. “Dubai,” comes the answer. “Oh man, do you know Omar? You need to meet Omar.” No context. On the business that Omar would take an interest in. On what Omar had to offer. Omar was in Dubai doing fintech things so that’s enough, I guess.

People doing things near each other.

Like that’s enough.

“It’s a massive opportunity,” says another voice, as loud as all the others. “We want to subvert the banks. We have the analysis. The ones that get with our programme and back us will make 4x their margin.”

Whatever that sentence means.

But he continues.

“Technology is at an inflection point. You know? We will use blockchain and do to banking what the internet did to the economy.”

Like that’s a thing.

Don’t forget to talk the talk, walk the walk and go big or go home before you take a breath, because you don’t have enough clichés in that one sentence of yours.

But this one was relentless. He kept going. Louder than the rest.

He did the first tokenisations you see.

Globally.

Ever.

“All my personal investments are in the US,” says another voice. “And they are performing excellently.”

“So why do you need external investment for your start-up?” asks an innocent bystander. Excellent question, innocent bystander.

“To disrupt the renewables real estate market in India,” answers the man. Like that’s an answer to the question.

I hope the innocent bystander was actually about to go “That is not an answer to my question,” but his voice was drowned out by another bro shouting “When is your announcement? We should talk.”

“Your people should call my people.”

But our man wasn’t to be deterred.

I’m talking now, he must have thought.

Because he ploughed on. “I also tokenised 25% of the royalty projections for Motörhead for the next 20 years.”

I am sure Motörhead are delighted and grateful. Because you see, “Spotify is a nightmare and they can’t front-load cashflows, so I have fixed it for them.”

Definitely grateful.

Listen to yourselves, people.

The offhand arrogance.

This arrogance was unattractive even before it was shown to also be ineffective.

But the last few years have shown us, the hard way, that the arrogant, self-centred, ‘I will take over the world’ founder… didn’t.

Actually.

They largely didn’t take over the world. The bravado didn’t translate to success. The successful businesses that are standing today are largely not the ones with the Big Brass Balls founder with the big ego. The success stories have founders that are diverse and different and frankly… a lot more humble than this nonsense.

The bravado was always there, for sure. But it didn’t quite work, frankly. It muddied the waters. It created some properly toxic work environments and largely it didn’t translate to success.

So stop, already.

The questions you always need to be answering, within your business, are why this, why now, why you.

There is such a thing as too soon in the curve.

There is such a thing as the skill set needed to succeed at something.

There is such a thing as solving a problem nobody has.

There is such a thing as Motörhead not being your ideal customer persona, actually.

There is such a thing as the right tool for the right problem.

And there is such a thing as the wrong answer or configuration to all of the above.

The rest is noise.

And unless you are answering the right questions and, occasionally, listening, so are you.

#LedaWrites

Leda Glyptis is FinTech Futures’ resident thought provocateur – she leads, writes on, lives and breathes transformation and digital disruption.

She is a recovering banker, lapsed academic and long-term resident of the banking ecosystem. She is chief client officer at 10x Future Technologies.

She is also a published author – her first book, Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition, is available to order here.

All opinions are her own. You can’t have them – but you are welcome to debate and comment!

Follow Leda on Twitter @LedaGlyptis and LinkedIn.