Incubating Innovation and Removing the Pain

Inc magainze has a cover story this month called "The Start-up Guru" about Y-Combinator founder Paul Graham. The feature story is a must read on a lot of levels, but the thing that's most interesting to me is that it suggests that in many ways, Y-Combinator exists to remove pain. I can't help but think about how many of the conversations we're having about the shifting world today are about how to remove the pain associated with the process of building meaning and creating value.

The Inc story started in a different place than you would expect: bunch of quotes from Graham about how much starting a company sucks. The story begins:

Of all the things that Paul Graham hates about running a start-up -- and there's not a whole lot about it that he likes -- the customers bug him the most. Everyone has a problem with your product, and people are constantly calling to complain about things you cannot possibly fix. Then there is the fact that you are doing everything for the first time, which creates a crippling sense of uncertainty, as well as a persistent fear that a single bad decision could doom the whole enterprise. There are squabbles with co-founders and combative negotiations with investors and that gut-wrenching period when you realize that success isn't going to come quickly or easily -- Graham calls it the Trough of Sorrow. Graham's start-up days are more than a full decade behind him, but he can't help recalling them with a shudder. "It's like talking to someone who went to war," Graham says. "It sucks to run a start-up."

Y-Combinator is an interesting response to that pain. Each year, the funder-mentorship-business-school-substitute program funds 40 seed-stage startups, getting them to the point where they can pitch to investors, or, in some cases, actually achieve profitability early on. For many participating members, it's the density of knowledge and experience that Graham (and other Y-Combinator leaders) provide access to, and the sense of community with peer startups that are the most valuable parts of the experience.

The point is that by leveraging knowledge, community, and a little bit of money, Y-Combinator is "mass-producing" the startup. To put it another way, they're removing the pain (or at least some of it) from the process by combining complementary assets - passion, experience, and low living cost on the one hand, experience, guidance, and funding on the other - and churning that mix into a real mutually supportive community.

I believe that the professional nonprofit sector is going through a "removing the pain" phase right now. People are beginning to ask why salaries and benefits have to remain so low? Why are investments in staff and process shunned for an elusive (and easy to fake) goal of a particular overhead percentage? Why isn't it easier for people who want to change the world to find communities of similarly passionate folks? Why don't we have shared spaces that accelerate the creation of good by bringing different types of actors together?

These questions speak to our desire to live meaningful, value-filled lives in concert with others. We want to change the world, but we want to do it in concert with others. This is why there is so much excitement around things like The Hub, NEDSpace, the Austin Social Innovation Hub and all the other spaces popping up.

Keep your eyes peeled for these sort of communities; I think they're going to be a key actor in new era of social change.