I have good days and bad days. I admit there are moments when I think that working on startups is futile and that none of the ideas we back will ever work as well as we want them to. On days like that I see all the reasons big institutions will hold back the kind of innovation that we think we need to improve the lives of billions of people. There are the days when I think the the London startup community can also be its own worst enemy by talking itself down or worse finding all the flaws in each others’ ideas even before they’ve got going. They’re the days when I wince at that awful quote by Margaret Mead that people use in countless dumb powerpoint presentations, “Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”.

But then there are good days when, taking a step back, I realise there is huge value to be created by helping solve the big social and environmental challenges of the world. Logically, I think, somebody is going to do it and it might as well be our community that does. Then I realise that over the last few months we’ve had more people walk through our door with big ideas than ever before. I think back to some of the amazing people I’ve met who are startlingly ambitious. They’re people who realise that pushing yourself and your idea further is what creates change. They think how can we make something ten times better and not just incrementally improve the world.

By raising our ambitions we raise our tolerance of risk and also I think our chances of success. Perhaps things will go wrong specatularly and people burn out more often but I think that’s what we should be working on — finding ways that people can be stupendously ambitious as they try to improve the world but doing that in a safe and supported way.

It’s days like that when I look at Margaret Mead’s quote and can’t help thinking it’s absolutely true.

A few weeks ago, sitting in the audience at O’Reilly’s (very good) Cultivate conference about startup culture I started to think about the power of working in small teams, and how little you hear about it how to do it well. By small I mean two to five people — any larger and other dynamics start to come into play — but they could be independent (such as a startup’s co-founders) or within larger organisations. The truth is that it’s very different to working on your own and also very different from working within the hierarchy of a larger organisation.

When you look around, there doesn’t seem to be that much out there about what makes a small team really zing. There’s tons of productivity porn about working as an individual and reams of material about large organisations, but when it comes to practical advice about working in a small group to achieve something extraordinary, I can’t find much worth reading. Then there’s the lack of specific tools. Even things like Basecamp and Google Apps have really been designed so they can scale to larger teams and organisations. It seems there’s very little out there that’s just to help small team collaboration. If you know of any, I’d appreciate some links or recommendations.

Perhaps the truth is that tech isn’t really the problem. When you’re talking about such small groups, it’s really all about how well you get on and the culture you develop in the team. If you want to work together and you have a problem worth solving, sometimes something magical happens. I think there maybe some tricks you can use to help that along but ultimately you need the right group of people at the right time.
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• Tim O’Reilly: Learn From Your Failures and Build Something Great (datacenterknowledge.com)

Euan’s post prompted me to think about how it’s such a struggle to try and write something every day. I know I want to but have to play mind games with myself to actually make it happen. I was doing quite well earlier this year but then everything seemed to step up a level at BGV a few months ago and something had to give.

I think remembering why I do it is important. As Euan says,

For me the biggest reason to blog is personal. If I don’t blog I don’t think as much, or at least not with as much focus. I don’t notice as much. I am less aware of what is happening around me and what it might mean. Of course if you blog in public then hopefully others will benefit from your efforts and if you are seen to be interesting and know what you are talking about then the process can lead to all sorts of opportunities. It’s like lobbing pebbles into ponds. You don’t always know where the ripples are going to go but you get better at lobbing bigger pebbles into better ponds.

So I’ll try harder and see if I can get back to daily blogging. I’m sure I’ll miss a few but it’s a habit I want to work on.