What chess training taught me about building a successful start-up / business

I think of myself as being proficient at chess. Growing up in Soviet Russia, we have been taught how to play chess by memorising different combinations and solving chess puzzles. However, on an unusually sunny and warm October day in New York, I had an al fresco chess game over a morning coffee with my friend William - and could not get the upper hand in the game. So I probed him what his approach to the game was. “Your training is a great starting point”, William replied,” as long as you know and remember every possible move of every game. In reality, it is not going to happen, so all you can do”, he continued, “is rather to make a move at any point in time which gives you the most advantage and options going forward”. At that moment I had an epiphany.

What we hear a lot in the modern business is “playbook” this or “growth hacking” that. Consultants, self-proclaimed gurus and “x-times entrepreneurs” who give you “10 step plan how to build [insert yours] function of your company” – and similar posts all over LinkedIn and Twitter. Does not that sound just great? Just like in the chess approach I outline – learn these patterns, apply to your business and you have got the next unicorn? Yes, if everyone was acting precisely the same way and there was a finite and predictable number of options. However, then reality strikes and all these playbooks go out of the window.

You physically cannot predict every single step of every scenario in your business – and even less so expect your competitors, partners and customers to follow it. Frankly speaking – it would be a waste of your precious founder’s / C-level exec’s time. I have many battle scars from things going not as planned and having to start the entire planning and strategising from scratch. No more.

Focus instead on strengthening essential positions of your business and opening yourself to new options. Instead of planning how to sell your product to a specific customer focusing instead on building a product which does not require a complicated sale process. Instead of building a complicated team structure which can tackle specific complicated issues instead get great and smart people who can flex and adapt. Instead of cherry-picking international geographies to expand instead focus on building the business which is scalable into virtually any geography.

In the start-up (and to be fair in the corporate) world when things change quickly the last thing you want to do is focus on well though but highly specific scenarios as I can tell you there are not likely to happen, at least the way you want it. So you want to have enough core strength and flexibility in the company to make it even when things go wrong.

I did lose the game of chess, but it taught me how to improve my chances of winning in the game of building businesses.