You can take the boy out of the startup…

But you can’t take the startup out of the boy. Over the last several weeks, I can see my interests shifting away from super-large institutions and back towards startup-style organizations. I suspect that this may be a reaction to my fear of losing personal control if I join a larger organization. I don’t want to run the risk of seeing good ideas from me (or my fictional team) getting killed for reasons I’m not privy to. And I like the energy of small, entrepreneurial organizations. I like being part of a nimble organization that can adjust course quickly when conditions change.

At the same time, this brings to light the problem I’ve been working against my whole life. When you’re in a big organization, you have the resources you need but the organization typically lacks the focus and agility needed to act quickly and with full effect. When you’re in a small organization, you can easily get everyone aligned and working as hard as possible towards the goal, but you lack the resources to deliver at the level of scale needed to make a major impact.

One of the places where this seems to be leading me is to think about the venture capital model – the VC model instructs you to create a robust platform, prove out your model and then rapidly scale. I find myself consistently attracted to these kinds of small, but scalable opportunities. Here’s a recent example. My friend Scott shared a link with me from a recent PBS episode dealing with the humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (its long so if you choose to watch it, know what you're getting into). As you might know, the DRC (formerly Zaire) has been going through a civil war for several years but is currently experiencing a period of relative peace. Two aid organizations (Concern and Doctors without Borders) are actively trying to push as much aid as possible into the more remote regions of the DRC during this quiet period. Their problem is that they can’t get the provisions in using trucks because the roads are so bad. Their solution: bicycles. Using a bank of about 70 bikes they can move in about 7 tons of supplies in a few weeks. This is far short of the 40 tons of supplies that they would like to distribute, but it’s a step in the right direction. And beyond the positive impact of getting the supplies in, there is also the additional benefit of job creation -- each bicycle courier is paid to deliver the aid which introduces additional capital into the local economy. Scott’s thought – how can we scale the bicycle solution?

This feels like a great local problem/solution pair with some pretty significant scale opportunities. The bikes can transport enough food/supplies to sustain thousands of people. What happens if we add more bikes? And/or what happens if we port this solution to the next country that needs aid and has terrible logistics infrastructure. What if I offered to start this program for Concern or Doctors without Borders? This would be an opportunity to still have significant control, but also have the opportunity to have a large impact.

I’m not convinced that this bicycle idea is THE idea for me by any stretch, but this is the KIND of idea that I’m finding more interesting than just plugging myself into an existing organization and letting them tell me what they want me to do. I’m not sure if I’m being smart or egotistical (probably both). I’m not swearing off the idea of working for a large organization, but this shift in my thinking feels somewhat concrete. There’s something satisfying about that.