JOURNAL / FOUNDERSHIP
Business is the founder's baby.
A reflection on business as a labour of love, responsibility, self-knowledge, and values made visible through work.
Concept artwork · Founder stewardship
WHAT IS A BUSINESS?
Maybe business is simply what keeps us busy.
Founding a business is a labour of love. You have to appreciate that if you are going to carry a good idea all the way to term. Most people describe business as something you do to make money, but that definition always felt too small for me. The word business sounds very close to busy. We are busy building, trading, learning, caring, creating, minding our own business, and sometimes being a little too interested in somebody else's. In that sense, life itself can feel like business: the thing that keeps us occupied here on earth.
THE THING YOU LABOUR FOR
Know what you are giving yourself to.
If you are going to spend a significant part of your life doing something, you should understand the details around it. We are born with little, then acquire, trade, receive, build, and share. Much of human history is a long search for ways to get what we lack without destroying one another in the process. That is why business can be a labour of love. We trade time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears for something we believe will help the people and the future we care about. The real question is not only how much money the work can make. It is what you are willing to labour so hard for.
THE FOUNDER'S BABY
A business needs someone to carry it.
In my mind, a business is much like a founder's baby. You raise capital the way you look for support before a difficult delivery. You work another job, save what you can, ask friends and mentors for help, build a plan, change the plan, and sometimes bootstrap with whatever the environment will allow. You need good partners who will not leave you carrying the whole pregnancy alone. You need people who check on the health of the idea. And when the baby is young, you have to protect it from the world while slowly teaching it how to survive in that world.
THE LINE YOU WILL NOT CROSS
The word almost has to matter.
A founder may be willing to do almost anything to see a business survive. Almost is important. Your values are the code that tells you where the exceptions are. They keep you from being seduced by the greater good when the road is actually taking you somewhere darker. Your organisation grows around you like a seed crystal. It amplifies your empathy, your ambition, your philosophy of life, your purpose, and your blind spots. The people who resonate with what you are building will eventually gather around the tune you keep playing.
KNOW YOURSELF
Before you build a child, meet the parent.
That is why self-discovery comes first. A founder needs to know why they want to do what they are doing and which parts of themselves they want their work to carry forward. The business will borrow more of your likeness than you may expect. There will be days you want to quit, days you wonder why you invited this pain into your life. On those days, purpose and values become the north star. They are how you keep living your truth while the business grows into something that can stand on its own.
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