Running a startup is a team building exercise, so why not share the joy and learn from each other.

by Pawel Rzeczkowski

The illusion:

Comfort and luxury are not drivers of innovation. How do I know you ask? Well, I feel as if all three of us here at RareBridge are running around seeking solutions as if our heads were on fire and we were looking for water! Comfort or luxury would not describe our circumstance, though at least judging by my two coworkers innovation is a necessity. Ignorant illusion at times creeps into our subconscious that if we only had more resources we could be more innovative and productive. Well, the past week I was dissuaded of that false illusion!!!

 

The contacts:

Working on a startup and being broke, one cannot afford many luxurious vacations. However we do have friends at global mega corporations with very deep pockets. One such friend informed me that they were planning a major corporate off-site to work on their corporate communication issues, a team building if you will. I laughed thinking of our great team of three, we could only dream of having communications issues. Though when I learned that my friends off-site was going to be held in Medellín in a posh hotel and I was welcome to crush for free, I knew my world was looking up.

 

The disillusion:

Little did I realize the mega corporate team building retreat is going to help me realize how lucky our startup is in terms of our scale and limited resources. The mega corp with their huge cash flows has many layers across all the continents, for them communication is not just something they do to get things done, it is an department in the organization. Learning and innovation as it turns out has to take a second seed to a lot of other organizational issues. For the team-building event they hired a professional facilitator with fancy degrees to help them figure our how to communicate. At our small startup we can only dream of access to the resources they have, but we have absolutely no problem communicating. You could say running the startup is a team building exercise, a perpetual off-site.

 

The pitch:

For us, the young entrepreneurs, resources of a mega corporation should not be an allure as that is a false image of prosperity. We are the foundation of the new economy. What we need the most is access to nimble starved creative open-minded over educated entrepreneurs like ourselves. Our conversations our collaboration and our ideas will help all of us succeed and come to market with the success that we are. At RareBridge we are creating a platform to make that communication and collaboration happen for all of us. Come check us out.