泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] Start-ups and pro baseball

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]

 

Start-ups and pro baseball

 

Recently I read an article about Kim Jin-Wook, a new manager of KT Wi—a South Korean professional baseball team. In the story, although it may sound strange, he was said to order his staff not to give him any information about players. It was quite new for me who have been familiar with the teachings of elders or superiors. But I could not help nodding my head in the agreement since I heard the rest of the story. He means that pushing players to take them to the next level will not lead to a high level of baseball proficiency. The new head coach thought that a very important skill is making good relationships with each player to help them to learn how to play for themselves.

 

This case cannot be simply work in most other companies. Running a business is based on manuals for stable production and management and the firm has to produce a product of the same quality in spite of changes in group membership. And creating effective business systems is very important. On the other hand, the professional baseball team and start-ups have much in common.

 

Performances of both greatly depend on individual ability. If the highest level players—Ryu Hyun-jin, Lee Seung-Yeop, and Lee Dae-ho—are replaced with moderately skilled players or inexperienced rookies, the team cannot be expecting to do well as much as the original members. Likewise, if a developer, senior executive, or team leader in the start-up with a small number of employees is replaced with someone, the company is not what it used to be.

 

Since I have worked in the venture capital firm for five years, I've seen many cases that CEOs fired employees, who were definitely not impressed, to replace them with new staff; they tended to identify start-ups with mid-size companies. In general, the chief executive officers made mention of the system. They thought that a reliable and effective business system can guarantee the company's stable growth. Of course, it applies to midsize businesses. However, a startup company, which typically faces high uncertainty, starts to lose its power to grow at the very moment when members of the firm feel that they are part of the business system. I'm sure that nobody wants to be treated as an alternative mechanical part. They probably would get a stable job without the fear of taking risks not joining as employees at a recently created company. Safety and stability are not so bad, however, they do not fit into general startup characteristics.

 

Video game developers are mostly startup companies. Building a stable system for those startups does not hold water. In addition, so does a venture capital firm where I work for or a business organization that partners with a startup to come up with something. If you discourage members of the group for expressing their opinions only emphasizing the business system although you are also a startup related worker, it's not much different from an idea that a high school baseball team which moves according to its coach can perform well as much as a pro baseball team does. Startups and mid-size companies are totally different. In other words, they are not in the same league. I hope that a lot of startup CEOs will not be under the illusion.

 

 

※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.

(http://www.khgames.co.kr)

 

Translation by Kim Ki-hui