Red tape kills ideas

Startups compete with incumbents by maintaining a healthy sense of disgust for bloat and bureaucracy.

Eight months in as a startup founder and I’ve not missed the red tape, bureaucracy, and promotion cycles of the corporate world one bit. 

My co-founder and I take great attention to detail and make the work as high-quality as possible. But because there are no other decision makers, everything happens immediately. We don’t plan strategy or brand pivots multiple quarters in advance. Execution is immediate. There is no “circling back.” 

Few ideas get dismissed without a small-scale test. It’s more fun when the most promising initiatives get the chance to win in the free market. 

As the company grows, chances are its speed will moderate. That said, I want to stay allergic to red tape. This feels like an important value to bake into a startup right away. 

I don’t envy friends who tell me they wait months for project approvals or that they require multiple teams’ clearance to adjust a single line of code. Red tape stifles urgency. Without urgency, progress stalls even without explicit rejection. 

When I worked at Business Insider — a job I loved — I’d pitch things that no one in particular would turn down, yet the slog of the approval process would cause ideas to wither and die on their own. 

It’s true that corporations like Business Insider sometimes get so big that they have no choice but to rely on red tape, complex management and HR departments to avoid missteps. There are more stakeholders and more years of social capital at risk. 

That reality, of course, is what startups can lean into for an edge against incumbents. The David-and-Goliath battle can be summed up as speed and risk-taking versus strength and a lack of concern for smaller competitors. 

As a small company becomes a large one, priorities shift from testing what might work to pumping out sure-bets. In both environments, inertia dictates innovation — hence why speed is so critical when you’re small. Rapid response and high-octane work is what allows a startup to punch above its weight. 

We’ve done just that with Opening Bell Daily. Our reporting is syndicated across Bloomberg Terminals and Inc. Magazine, published side by side with the likes of the New York Times, Reuters, the Associated Press and Business Insider.

It’s a cool milestone we would not have secured without moving fast. 

Separate from speed, part of what’s fueled the company through the early months is enthusiasm for the work at hand. There is a personality component here, but even so, enthusiasm is rarely a core value for larger corporations. 

In our startup, this has manifested as something like a company ethos — taking pride and ownership in good work. It’s a type of buy-in that can’t be mandated, yet it underpins every decision and milestone. 

One last observation on startups: There is no coasting, no faking, and no gimmicks. 

It’s possible to learn some clever ways to operate or save time, but it is always about work. Luckily I have no interest in doing much else. I know people with outwardly impressive, high-paying jobs who brag about their roles requiring very little attention or effort.

Good for them — they benefit from the shielding mechanism of red tape. 

I write all this today as part of what I hope will be an early chapter of a long success story for Opening Bell Daily. 

I am aware the overwhelming majority of startups fail. The reason we’re doing this, as the overwhelming majority of founders say, is that we believe this company will land comfortably to the right of the bell curve.

Banishing red tape the whole way up seems like an important part of the puzzle.