QUOTE : Work like a start-up, but mean it With the culture in place, and a process for change in place, how hard can this be? Well, now you have to get people working like you. I’ve worked with a few large clients over the years, and while they loved the idea of working like a start-up, it was a bit like wanting to go to Glastonbury, but only if you got to avoid everything about a large music festival. The allure of working like start-ups, but in a sort of polite, 9–5, big corporate backing kind of way. They wanted to work like a start-up, but had $100 million to spend. They wanted to be agile and nimble, but with a complex approval process. We want to challenge everything, but with the data to support it. Let’s go crazy, but please use existing marketing partners, let’s break new ground but ‘our competitors haven’t done it yet’. ‘We’re going to act like a start-up’ is a new corporate mantra. What would the founders of Klarna do here? How would Spotify market this? How can we replicate WeWork’s approach? Yet it never works that way. Spreadsheets need to be filled in showing target user numbers, someone back-fills profitability requirements, someone calculates projected revenue, and automatically an investment level is found. All with no idea that this is all the antithesis of start-ups. Start-ups hustle, they ask favours, and they use the limitation of money to force themselves to try risky things.