Why Startups Need to Break Stuff
It’s not so much about ethics as it is about innovation
Imagine this conversation happening some time in the early 2000s.
“Hey Steve, what if we took one of those flip phones you see everywhere these days, fashioned it into a brick, and treated it like a little tiny computer?”
I’m pretty sure that’s not exactly how the iPhone was born, but I believe in my heart that the spirit of the invention behind it went something like that. In my version, the person speaking to Steve may have been his own internal monologue, but it also might have been Woz.
My point is, some of the best and most successful startups began by breaking something and reconfiguring it for another purpose. In other words, they used a thing for something other than for what it was intended.
When we hear “go fast and break things,” we think of Zuckerberg, and we think of Facebook, and we think of a social “hellscape” selling rage as a product to advertisers. That’s a bad rap on the quote. I love the concept of breaking stuff because to me it’s about repurposing product, reinventing process and bucking tradition.
In that sense, there’s never been a better time to build a successful startup out of broken stuff.
