Startup leaders need to learn how to build companies ready for crisis

I've seen this problem from the side of both very large and very small organisations and TBH, what startup leaders actually need to learn how to build companies where crisis prevention is correctly incentivized. In all the startups I've seen so far it's so obvious that successful firefighting is way better for your career than never having any crises at all.

What startup leaders should do is to stop to externalize their costs. I have seen again and again (Uber, Uber Eats, AirBnb, ...) startups pay less than minimum wage, label employees as "self employed", treat residential neighbors as hotels. This startups rip the profits while other people pays the cost. I live in Stockholm and I am tired of seeing electric scooters blocking paths and bicycle lanes.

If all the innovation of an startup is to externalize its costs, and do what the real industry does (Hotels, cabs, ...) but breaking all the laws then it is time to stop startups.

I know that this message is probably not welcome here, but someone needs to say that many people is getting tired about the entitlement of all this founders that want to "revolutionize" the world by pocketing the money meanwhile they make the life of citizens in the neighbors that they operate worse off.

Startups are a systemic risk because many of them are created just to leech society with disregard of their impact. Startups are no ready for crisis because they just do not care about consequences. Everybody wants to be the next billionaire, no matter the cost.

Why? The entire point of a startup is to combine capital and labor in a way that is likely to fail on the off chance that it succeeds wildly.

You greatly leverage your capital and labor resources in an attempt to come skidding afire to a safe landing at profitability. Planning for crises would require taking resources away from growth, and reducing the opportunity to succeed.

Good book on building organizational systems that are able to deal with many different situations:

One Mission: How Leaders Build a Team of Teams:

https://www.amazon.ca/One-Mission-Leaders-Build-Teams/dp/073...

This is an interesting shift.

Maybe engineering leaders who advocate good engineering practices will gain more clout, as failures now have a higher cost to executives' careers than before.

Latin American companies are ready for crisis because that's about the only thing that happens down these parts.

Hurricanes, economic breakdown, bad power grids, earthquakes, political instability... It's our daily predicament.

Down here in PR we've been busy building companies without power or water, enduring disasters AND still having spare time to have fun ousting our governor in a month.

Latino entrepreneurs are resilient by default.