Are startups incompatible with sustainability by nature?
I don’t mean greenwashing this time—I mean sustenance of a business structure. Ultimately the only real goal in mind is to become a bigger company, The Very Hungry Caterpillar style, or become PART of a bigger company male anglerfish style.
Whether a plucky new company intends on selling up/out or simply becoming too big and established to be called a startup anymore, that’s the endgame every time—get bigger and bigger, lest you die.
Figuratively.
Probably.
Haje Jan Kamps of TechCrunch said it like this:
“The moment [a company] becomes a bona fide, repeatable business, it’s not a startup anymore. Everything changes overnight — and quite a few startups seem to forget that. Once you find that business model, it becomes a game of acceleration and execution.
On the darker side of this moon, if our brave little startup can’t make the magic happen, it’s curtains.
In fact, the startup might hawk its brainy bits to some bigger fish or get “aqui-hired,”…And so, the startup vanishes, either gobbled up or just gone.”
The finest point is added with this summation,
Startups are designed to be shooting stars: brief, bright, and destined to either blaze a trail or fizzle out. This relentless turnover is the lifeblood of the tech ecosystem.
Under such a framework how can any structure be maintained? Sometimes changes could be good—the harried content creator becomes the balanced video editor as more people are hired to do more work. Other times those changes are bad, like a newbie content creator replacing a video editor, copywriter, VO artist, and photographer amongst layoffs prompted by insistent investors.
Jan Kamps went on to cover a new model touting its flouting of the go fast and break things model as it pertains to organization. Amit Paul and Nils von Heijne got the Swedish government behind their Regenerative Community Organism paradigm—a structure that proposes a standard for both saving the earth and increasing a business’s accountability.
“By drawing parallels between natural systems and organizational structures, the RCO model advocates for businesses to emulate the resilience, adaptability and regenerative capacity of living systems. This involves creating efficient and adaptable business operations that can contribute positively to the ecosystems and communities they interact with.”
A triad of components forms the RCO model: The Constitution AKA the Goal, the question the company aims to answer. The Association, a safekeeper of purpose that keeps the business on track towards The Constitution. And the idea of the Life Cycle that permeates all aspects of the business, as something that lives and grows, but doesn’t wreak havoc as it shifts.
Along with the implementation of better tech (though that remains undefined, by us all) RCO calls for:
“Designing with purpose: Businesses must redefine their purpose to align with regenerative and circular principles, ensuring that every aspect of their operations contributes positively to the environment and society.
Creat[ing] holistic value: The RCO model emphasizes creating value across the economic, environmental, and social dimensions. This involves rethinking the business model to optimize for sustainability and resilience.
Adaptive governance and leadership: The RCO model necessitates adaptive governance structures and leadership styles that are responsive to changing environmental and social conditions.
Engagement and collaboration: Success under the RCO model relies on engaging stakeholders and fostering collaboration across sectors and industries. By working together, businesses, governments and communities can drive the transition toward regenerative and circular economies.”
So basically, stay high-minded, love Mother Earth and change without being changed. ‘Don’t end up like Apple and Google’, essentially. 
It’s a nice concept, if a little nebulous. But can it actually be done? And furthermore, should it?
“If an RCO could potentially block an exit opportunity (say, if a less scrupulous company wants to buy the startup), that could prove to be a poison pill for potential VC investment,” Jan Kamps notes.
Personally, I prefer the idea of cutting out VC altogether. But I also realize that’s not always practical, or even possible, and as much as the idea of ‘Line must go up, exponentially, and forever’ is entirely rotten, change is going to be incremental regardless of my opinion.
If your business is the first pebble in a rockslide though, I salute the commitment to gravity.