| If the premise is that surrounding yourself with other startups is not sufficient in itself to accelerate your company's growth, then it's trivially true and of little value. If the premise is that there is no value to be added from startups seeking high growth from surrounding yourself with other startups, then I have to disagree. Sure, you won't get high growth if you spend all your time hanging with brogrammers and drinking at industry social events. But learning from smart people is something that happens almost by osmosis if you mix with a good selection of other startups. Being around when one startup falters and the founders and team are looking to join something interesting means your network for recruiting grows, and some of the best team mates I've had have been when one startup died and folks joined up for another. That's accelerating growth. Seeing what mistakes others are making prevents you from making and short cuts the path to making the right choices. That's accelerating growth. If you've got a crappy product and an idea that isn't going to work, and you spend yourself hanging out with others similar to you in that, well, you're not going to do anyone any good. Particularly not when, as I've seen, it becomes a complaint fest about the industry not an analysis of what you could be doing better. Like anyone who's ever worked at a big company will tell you, if you hang outside the building with the smokers bitching about the company, don't be surprised if you aren't the ones doing well at that company. So YMMV, but absolutely mix with other startups. Pick well who your friends, mentors and models are. It's unlikely that it's going to hinder your growth, unless your attitude was such that you probably weren't going to get that growth in the first place. |