Vanity Metrics
In the current startup environment, “vanity metrics” refer to tracking things that “make you feel good, but don’t offer clear guidance.” But the human propensity towards vanity – things or pursuits that are “worthless, trivial, or pointless” – is pretty much timeless. The definitive take came from Solomon, who took quite a bit of time to discuss the Vanity of vanities (for us English-speakers, “a Hebrew superlative expressing the supreme degree of futility and emptiness”). In a modern webby context, think page views vs. conversions.
Examples abound of people thinking that what they do really matters, when it really doesn’t. I know of startup accelerators who spend more time on PR and marketing than with their own teams (presumably the reason they exist). I know of so many startup people who attend every startup mixer and event but I’m hard-pressed to describe what value they are actually creating. Even in causes as noble as human rights, I learned this week that there are some organizations generating all kinds of marketing campaigns and attending all kinds of events which lead to pretty much zero changes in actual lives.
No surprise this simply echoes what has also been around since Solomon’s time (relatively), when the prophets lamented the false religion of going through the motions which appear righteous but lead to no real justice or positive change in the world. Isaiah and Jesus paraphrased this as “honoring with lips but with a heart far away.”
The last thing I want to do is activity that appears valuable but simply isn’t. Whether in business or any other area of our lives, may we have the humility and awareness to avoid a life of vanity and instead be grounded in what is truly real, important and effective.
The Price of Innovation
The last few years has seen a proliferation of accelerators for various reasons, including lower barriers to entry and capital needs for tech startups, and increasingly fluid information flows. As a result, lots of testing and learning can happen earlier in the startup process, and accelerators, with their combination of coaching, provision of professional services and introduction to investment, have served to address these earlier phases.
It’s easy to argue that too many emerged for the market: you can look at the ensuing fallout as evidence. Jed Christiansen reveals some dead ones in his list of global programs and just this month a few other casualties were reported.
However, I contend that the changed dynamics of startups can bear this supply; the problem is rather with the mission of the accelerators rather than their number. I’ve been privileged to run a program unique in our focus and priorities on technology innovation over ROI potential. Considering the overall duration it takes to generate returns (let alone any decent returns at all) in early stage investing, accelerators focused on shorter-term (as in, less than say 7 years) ROI are not surprisingly at risk.
Perhaps more importantly, it’s crucial to recharacterize startup support at these early phases, until sufficient time has passed, as an educational rather than financial endeavor (though certainly with financial ramifications…just as a college degree has financial ramifications, but unless you go to trade school, that shouldn’t be your focus while getting the education).
Nearly a decade ago, Wired founder and overall tech philosopher-pundit Kevin Kelly posited that “Wasting time and inefficiencies are the way to discovery.” No wonder schools often feel inefficient and standardized tests are suboptimal ways to measure true learning and progress. For the love of the new and innovative, bring on the inefficiency. And bring on the sponsors of it who have much to benefit from the discoveries that ultimately get made.