Low Consciousness Beats High Consciousness For Startup Founders

What people usually mean by “the woke-conscious type”

is someone who fusses over every little detail, picks brand-name or fashionable items even for trivial or nearly disposable tools, eats lunch at high-society cafes, and pours self-investment into self-improvement, cultural refinement, and health with intense interest and heightened awareness, and who

makes no attempt to hide any of it

or rather, shows it off proudly.

A character trait that naturally comes attached to this, I think, is what you might call “supreme confidence and smooth sailing.”

I especially want people who belong to startups to be the “low-consciousness” type. That doesn’t mean don’t own brand-name goods, or cup noodles are fine for lunch, or if you have time for self-improvement you should be writing code instead.

What I want to touch on is mainly the mentality side of things, specifically the story rooted in the

stumbling

that comes with startups.

The “learning through validation” that concepts like the lean startup often talk about isn’t limited to early-stage startups. For any “organization that takes on uncertain challenges,” it’s essential, inevitable even — a baptism, a gate you must pass through. But learning is often accompanied by pain, by setbacks. At that moment, the woke-conscious type thinks

“This isn’t how it was supposed to go.”

But the low-consciousness type is fine.

“Well, this is about where we are for now. We’re still just getting started!”

Which of the two can be said to actually believe in themselves, in their team? The former is close to mere arrogance. Everyone fails somewhere, and the probability of failure naturally rises when you’re making a reckless challenge in an uncertain domain. Everybody knows this.

To think “but we’ll be fine” is nothing but the thinking of a gambling addict. “There’s no way it can go any lower.” “There’s no way none of the 12 races hits.” “Someone’s bound to cut this E1.” That kind of thinking, when facing an uncertain event, is a sickness — a sickness unto death.

You will fail. So will I. So will we. We’ll end up looking pathetic. We’ll get hurt. We’ll get insulted. That’s just how it is.

Even a startup that’s raised billions of yen within a few years of founding and ballooned to 50 employees is, in the end, an organization and a management still only a few years old, a mere child. No matter how skillful, accomplished, and polished the people you’ve gathered are, look closely inside and the reality is bound to be a mess to the extreme. Mistake that for “we’re doing great” and you’ll get badly hurt when you fall into a hole. In other words, the recommendation to be “low-consciousness” isn’t about dragging yourself down with negative thinking. It’s essentially a form of self-discipline — “don’t get carried away” — that turns into “if you don’t properly build up what needs to be built up, there’s no tomorrow.” It’s a code that’s half made for startups, and thoroughly startup-like.

Carry a hungry spirit together with upward ambition and a low self-assessment, and that actually becomes your strongest weapon.

I once had the opportunity to go to Israel and met all kinds of people there. What they all had in common was a “low self-assessment” combined with confidence that “when it comes to innovation, we won’t lose.” This self-assessment is a self-assessment as a nation. They seemed to genuinely believe their own country was in a precarious state. That’s different from having pride or not. Pride is sometimes something that already exists within you, without grounds, without having been built up. But here, their sense that Israel as a country is risky is simply the conclusion of objective insight. They think the country itself is in danger. So they work hard. If they don’t work hard, they believe the country will simply vanish, and that they themselves will die.

As I wrote about in the piece on Paolo Maldini

https://clazytech.com/2014/02/89/

it’s a very good thing to constantly be losing, or on the verge of losing. It lets you see just how much higher you could climb.

Still not there.

No good yet.

Still to come.

This is the correct, innovative mentality.

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2018/02/435/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.