Building an entrepreneurial organization
and what we do at Seedstars
When we launched Seedstars, we had in mind a self-managed and autonomous organization. We did not want to become bottlenecks and had to bring together talents who would be able to develop and run the company without our intervention.
Our culture and values have been dispersed across more than 80 countries thanks to certain key but unique elements: first, a physical presence through events which were a fantastic way to bring people together. Then, we leveraged our coworking spaces. Last but not least, the annual meeting in Switzerland, for our network and our talents was, once again, a great moment to strengthen the principles behind Seedstars.
Zooming out, the work began with the establishment of a strong mission (i.e. impacting people's lives) both for us and more importantly serve as a magnet for talents. Then, planting the seed of our culture based on our values that will allow us to attract talents who adhere to them.
Today, web3 celebrates decentralization, community participation and personal ownership, many articles are now written on the subject and we can finally put words on principles that we have followed or wish to follow.
Talents are everywhere
I have around me friends or acquaintances for whom it was, pre-covid, inconceivable to work from home, in a café or in a co-working, whether by choice or by obligations.
After covid, most employers will eventually adapt and give their employees some flexibility with likely a hybrid work model that better suits what talents are looking for today.
Now that people have tasted remote work, it will be difficult to get them to accept a job that does not offer this flexibility. At the same time and more than ever, companies will have to deal with the management of their office space in order to optimize it and offer a number of work places that are always sufficient. Companies like WeWork are, in my opinion, well positioned to provide an on-demand service to employers that is tailored to this new way of working.
By going remote, companies will naturally and also become more flexible and recruit talent internationally, which will bring better diversity but also pay parity.
DAO
If you follow web3 and more particularly the way protocols are managed, you have certainly heard the term “DAO” for “Decentralized Autonomous Organization”.
Traditionally, a company's structure has been the most effective way to bring talent together to create value in pursuit of a goal. There was a top down approach and/or in few cases a quasi flat hierarchy. However, the economic system was anchored around “shareholder capitalism” which prioritizes the interests of investors/shareholders.
DAOs offer a much more decentralized and transparent framework that brings together more stakeholders who all have an interest, economic or not, in achieving an objective.
This crypto-structure governance and ownership, gives stakeholders the ability to determine the direction of a project and profit from its success.
This notion of "stakeholder capitalism" was born and with it, the development of a model of ownership which remunerates (via a new corporate currency or "tokens") the creators, managers of the community and even the users or super fans. We are moving towards an “ownership economy”.
How we did it?
Since 2013, we have applied many of the principles behind DAOs. The transition and change of mindset takes time despite having applied them early on.
A traditional top-down micro-managerial and hierarchical organization (and not even a flat organization) will not work if we want to have ambitious, independent people who get things done, who try new things, take risks and step out of their comfort zone.
Thus, it has always been crucial for us to:
Create smaller teams that are flexible and autonomous and then let them be entrepreneurial by adapting themselves in the face of feedback or changes in the market
Distribute authority and decision-making within a given framework, for example all important decisions such as the allocation of resources (i.e. budget), investments and people, how they want to work, roles and responsibilities, how to communicate, etc.
With this structure, we naturally involve more people representing all departments in key decisions, which facilitates future buy-in but also the execution of decisions.
We still have a lot of work to achieve a truly autonomous and self-managed organization, but the foundations are laid.