

What Startups Can Learn From Sun Tzu’s The Art Of War - MRonney
http://techli.com/2012/06/startup-the-art-of-war/

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mindcrime
Good stuff. Personally, I've been spending a lot more time lately getting
serious about strategic thinking, doing competitive analysis and formulating
meaningful strategies instead of just "winging it" so much.

The book _Outhink The Competition_ [1] really inspired me to start down this
path. There's some good stuff in there, and that led to me finally picking up
my copy of Porter's _Competitive Strategy_ [2] and digging in. I take this
seriously enough now, that I wrote a quick and dirty internal app just for
managing competitive intelligence and keeping track of documents and links
related to competitive analysis and strategy formulation.

Which, when you think about it, is a Good Thing. I mean, if you're talking to
an investor and they say "how do you intend to compete with $FOO?" It's
probably good to have a solid understanding of exactly how you intend to do
that, instead of just saying "Oh, we'll out execute them." Especially when you
choose to play in crowded markets like we do[3]...

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Outthink-Competition-Generation-
Strate...](http://www.amazon.com/Outthink-Competition-Generation-Strategists-
Options/dp/1118105087)

[2]: [http://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Strategy-Techniques-
Indust...](http://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Strategy-Techniques-Industries-
Competitors/dp/0684841487)

[3]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4054540>

~~~
ckluis
Seems like if you could automate your app a little you might have a decent app
targeted for the startup crowd :)

~~~
mindcrime
Funny you would mention that. This app has been so useful to me already, that
I've considered making a SaaS offering out of it. If I don't do that, we might
just release it as open-source. Or both. The biggest argument against making a
SaaS offering out of it, is that this type of app isn't really core to what
we're doing, and I'm worried that it would just turn into a distraction.

~~~
ckluis
Open sourcing it would seem like a nice way to potentially have other people
help make a product better for you that isn't your core product.

Or do what I think 37signals should have done with sortfolio. Start a
subsidiary and put 1-2 people removed from your company in charge of it. That
way you still own the IP, but you aren't required to focus on it.

~~~
mindcrime
Heh, I don't think we're big enough for a subsidiary yet. :-) But yeah, at
some point I think we'll do something with it, even if it's just putting it up
on Github. We're an Open Source startup anyway (as in, all of our core
offerings are Open Source / AL 2.0 licensed), so doing that kind of thing is
in our DNA.

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AlexFromBelgium
The Facebook, Twitter, Google.. buttons hover over the text. Not everyone is
surfing the web on a 32' monitor in full screen you know!

~~~
dredmorbius
Social interstitials / floating elements are rapidly becoming one of my least
favorite elements of current Web design.

"Remove It Permanently" plugin rocks Firefox. No such love on mobile browsers,
unfortunately.

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Kuiper
The Art of War is a work that I often hear recommended, but I seldom see
endorsements for specific translations. Can anyone who is familiar with the
work remark on which translations are considered best? Bonus points for
versions available as free ebooks, although I'm not averse to visiting my
local library either.

~~~
rcamera
I have read The Art of War at least 12 times in the past few years, from
multiple translations, and my favorite one is from Ralph D. Sawyer:
[http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Art-Of-
War/dp/0813330858/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Art-Of-
War/dp/0813330858/ref=sr_1_39?ie=UTF8&qid=1338613639&sr=8-39)

Translations can be extremely different, most of them are pretty vague, and
many are just plain wrong. The above one is known between scholars to be one
of the best translations out there, if not the best. He also gives a very nice
46-pages-long introduction to the context of where the book was written, and
about who Sun Tzu was. Other than that, there at the end of each chapter there
are some good comments from him, explaining certain aspects of it, which is
good for the first reading.

I would stay away from the free ebooks/versions, I haven't yet found one with
a good enough translation, and that causes issues like for example, the sixth
chapter (one of the most important ones, in my opinion), which usually has a
completely different interpretation in the free ones I've read, because of the
bad translation.

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jordanlev
I disagree with the author's interpretation of some of these points.

The author inteprets "... when able to attack, we must seem unable..." as
meaning you should lay low. On the contrary, this is talking about the element
of surprise and sending a signal that what's going on is the opposite of
what's really going on. Are you about to launch? Say you're still hunkering
down working on product. Do you have a ton of money available? Make it seem
like you're operating on a shoestring. Are you operating on a shoestring? Then
make it seem like you have plenty of funds. My understanding of various "Art
of War" and military strategy type things I've seen is that the element of
surprise is the single most important tool for leveraging a weak position into
a strong one.

And the second quote, about "It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with
the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying
on" is I think referring to people who have been through the horrors of war
and hence know enough to be cautious and not rush into it, as opposed to
younger/newer soldiers who can't wait to get into a battle and show how
awesome they are. If this has any analogy to the startup world I'd think it
would be more like "only those who've experienced the downsides of taking on
VC funding will know whether they should take funding again next time vs.
bootstrapping".

------
mindcrime
And on a related note, be sure to check out:

 _Hide a Dagger Behind a Smile: Use the 36 Ancient Chinese Strategies to Seize
the Competitive Edge_

[http://www.amazon.com/Hide-Dagger-Behind-Smile-
Competitive/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Hide-Dagger-Behind-Smile-
Competitive/dp/1598693808/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338585005&sr=1-1)

 _The Prince_

[http://www.amazon.com/Prince-Niccolo-
Machiavelli/dp/03121497...](http://www.amazon.com/Prince-Niccolo-
Machiavelli/dp/0312149786/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338585053&sr=1-6)

and

 _The Art of Worldly Wisdom_

[http://www.amazon.com/Art-Worldly-Wisdom-Balthasar-
Gracian/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Art-Worldly-Wisdom-Balthasar-
Gracian/dp/1619491648/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338585085&sr=1-1)

~~~
Kaizyn
The Prince is an excellent book. However, it provides practical and ruthless
advice on how to run a country. It's insights into human nature aren't very
helpful in how to perform in the business world.

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GoliMaster
Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey - This article and it's responses tell me that
there should be something available for anyone who just wants to learn from
other people's experiences. To just throw something out there, imagine that
something could be an app or website, possibly called "experienced" with
nothing but a search bar when you arrive at it's homepage. Type in anything,
click search and you get other people's experiences and stories on that
subject organized by ratings. Quora is closely related to this idea, however
Quora is about asking anything, it's not focused. The goal is to have a
database of experiences, stories, quotes, etc. that people can quickly and
effectively search through and learn what to do or not to do resulting in
gaining confidence to accelerate to their goal in their current situation.
Your thoughts?

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casemorton
I appreciated the examples the author cited. So often we see posts that layout
generic advice by non-founding writers, its important to back your points up
with case studies and examples.

~~~
saraid216
I generally dislike articles like this--where they try to back up their "wise
advice" by appealing to some tangentially-related ancient wisdom--but the
examples made it worthwhile.

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alecco
It's the 21st century and there's a field for this: Complexity Theory applied
to organizations. There's no need for ancient dogma, we have science.

~~~
SkyMarshal
It's instructive to compare the two. 'Ancient dogma' is, after all, the result
of hundreds, or in the Chinese case, thousands of years of social evolution.

------
JohnBooty
This is a great book and I'd recommend it to anybody.

Despite the militaristic title, it's not about aggression or destroying your
enemies. Throughout the book, open warfare is always depicted as the most
costly and least desirable option. Adding an enemy's strength to yours, with
zero destruction, is regarded as the ultimate form of victory.

~~~
mustafa0x
You seem to be using destroy and open warfare synonymously. The Art of War is
about one of these, not the other:

<http://www.thefreedictionary.com/destroy>

    
    
      de·stroy  (d-stroi)
      v. de·stroyed, de·stroy·ing, de·stroys
      v.tr.
      1. To ruin completely; spoil: The ancient manuscripts were destroyed by fire.
      2. To tear down or break up; demolish. See Synonyms at ruin.
      3. To do away with; put an end to: "In crowded populations, poverty destroys the possibility of cleanliness" (George Bernard Shaw).
      4. To kill: destroy a rabid dog.
      5. To subdue or defeat completely; crush: The rebel forces were destroyed in battle.
    

See 5.

~~~
SkyMarshal
_The pinnacle of military excellence is not to win one hundred victories in
one hundred battles. It is to subjugate your enemy without fighting. -- Sun
Tzu_

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anaheim
What utter tripe. The author of this article "worked at startups in Boulder,
CO and New York, where she worked to develop communities and delight users."

Translate that into English as "has spent her time writing navel-gazing
articles like this that are unnecessarily idolised by a ton of adoring fans
hanging on to every word."

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billpatrianakos
The Art of War can really be applied to any domain or thing you want to do.
It's beautiful in that it's specific and general at the same time. I once had
a guy tell me to read it in high school when I was trying to win back a girl.
It worked.

You can apply The Art of War to anything that involves competition. I don't
know about anyone else but for me I think a lot of the success I've had in
applying what's in the book to my life can't be totally attributed to just
applying the advice in and of itself. For me, part of my success in its
application most likely came from feeling more confident and like you knew
some sort of secret ancient wisdom that someone else didn't know. Reading
through it and thinking of applying it to your own situation really will have
that confidence boosting effect I think.

