Lessons learned from one of America’s earliest start-ups.
Are you dealing with a chaotic and unpredictable market?
Can you imagine starting a business in an entirely new market where you don’t speak the language, don’t have the right team, and management has no idea what they are doing?
This was the experience of John Smith, one of the original settlers of the Jamestown Colony in Virginia, in 1607.
It can often feel like a chaotic, unpredictable time for those of you starting up anything right now. Although I am not a historian, I have an Executive MBA, so I decided to look back at one of the most chaotic and unpredictable start-ups, English America, to discover leadership lessons from Smith’s time in Jamestown that could be valuable for people starting ventures today.
Barriers to Entry
The barriers to entry were very high for the English starting their new settlement in Jamestown. The “launch team” had to battle pirates, and the sea could smash their 40’ schooners into toothpicks, sending everyone to their watery deaths.
In May 1607, though, a team led by John Smith made it to land, but there were no buildings or grocery stores. There was only a totally unfamiliar and wild land they didn’t understand.
They built their settlement on a marsh, with little access to fresh water and surrounded by disease-carrying mosquitoes. They also had no idea how the indigenous Americans living on the land for generations would respond to their presence. No amount of education or experience could prepare them for the great unknown they were facing.
Lesson 1:
When your barriers to entry feel impossible and even life-threatening, remember they are not compared to the actually life-threatening obstacles faced by the original settlers of North America! Hopefully, this can put things into perspective.
Remember: To navigate complexity, stay nimble.
During the early days of COVID, I helped launch a virtual programming campaign for a hospitality brand. We had never done a Facebook Live or any virtual event before. We started experimenting, doing low-risk trials every week to see what the audience wanted, what our experts could deliver, and how our team could manage the tech.
We had three days to get started, and fortunately, the entire leadership team understood it would be messy, but every month, the campaign got better and better.
HIRE WELL
InMay 1607, approximately half of the 144 settlers and sailors who landed at Jamestown with Smith were “gentlemen.
Imagine you’ve raised money for your new technology start-up. Would you hire the best and brightest programmers or a bunch of lazy and spoiled deadbeats? Well, in the case of the Jamestown colony, they did the latter.
Gentlemen were men of wealth who did not have a profession. Often running away from family responsibilities, these men sailed to Virginia because they’d invested in shares of this new colony and wanted to make some easy money.
They — and the wealthy investors who ran the Virginia Company from their comfortable couches in London — had very little understanding of the work waiting for them and didn’t put the right men on that boat.
When it came time to build living quarters and plant food, they lay around and complained. Instead of populating their boat with enough carpenters, blacksmiths, and other types of workers who could help build this new settlement, they brought over many mid-level royalty with no work ethic.
When no crops were planted in time for a harvest to make it through winter and battles with Powhatan, Chief of Chiefs of all the tribes in the region, led to a starvation campaign against the settlers, half the colony was dead by Spring.
When Smith was finally put in charge, his motto was “work or starve. Each colonist was required to spend four hours per day farming so the colony would have enough food to eat. He had a clear grasp of priorities.
In this case, owning their own food supply was essential. As he sent word back to London requesting more supplies and men, he was very specific about the types of men he needed, and they finally listened.
Lesson:
Know what you need and ensure you hire skilled people in that area. It sounds so obvious, but it’s incredible how often this does not happen.
Remember: If you are a founder, recognize your limitations and ensure you have the right people in the right job to fill in your weaknesses.
I worked for a company where they brought in a CEO from another industry, believing that her outsider perspective would help.
Unfortunately, because she didn’t understand the business she was in, her hires were wildly off the mark. After firing — and paying a large severance to do so — multiple leadership team members, she realized the process needed improving.
To her credit, she started a group interviewing process so there would be a more informed and reasoned approach to hiring. The right person in the proper role saves tremendous financial and morale costs down the road.
PIVOT WHEN NECESSARY
When the English first sent men over, they came for gold. As John Smith rightly recognized, if there was gold in the ground, the indigenous Americans would have already discovered it and would be using it. But they weren’t.
Smith realized that the real “gold” in Virginia was the fur, the timber, the corn, and all the natural resources in abundance on the land.
After much-wasted resources, time, and manpower devoted to gold-digging instead of food planting, the leadership in London finally gave up their dream of finding the shiny prize.
It wasn’t until John Rolfe, Pocahantas’ English husband, started planting and exporting tobacco that the gold in Virginia’s land was recognized and harvested.
Lesson:
It’s so easy to fall in love with our ideas and to blindly follow them even when they — like a bad relationship — take us down the road to suffering and bad outcomes.
Remember: Notice what’s a valid signal and what’s noise.
Especially as a new entrant, you have no business being arrogant. Listen to your team, your market, and your customers.
I was talking with an expert who was writing a book for veterans, providing resources for finding government aid to fund their education. She was a writer so writing a book made sense, but when we talked about her primary customer — young, male veterans — she realized that they are watching way more videos than reading.
We started brainstorming how she could cut up her content into bite-sized pieces and put them on a youtube channel. This pivot helped her be where her audience was so she could reach more of her people, have more impact and help more vets with her valuable information.
Lessons Learned
Ultimately, like many start-ups, the Virginia Colony was a financial failure. By 1624, it had lost over 200,000 pounds, and King James I dissolved the company and turned Virginia into a royal colony.
If you are a founder, remember the business lessons of Jamestown.
- You have to put your ego and pre-conceived ideas out of the way.
- Hire well and to do so, you need to be honest about your weaknesses, and know precisely what business you are in, and the people you need for your important tasks.
- Also, learn the language and listen to the market.
- Finally, keep your eyes open to clarify priorities and to discover opportunities to pivot.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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