Reasons with components

Reasons with components

 

by Günter Faltin (excerpt from "David versus Goliath" )

Let us please remove the conventional view from our idea that a company has to be a structure made up of rooms, workplaces and employees. The question that we can ask ourselves in a society with a high degree of division of labor is rather: Can't I put together my company from existing components? Whether this requires space, employees, whatever resources, is still a completely open question at this point. The decisive work happens in the head of the founder. A modern, work-sharing economic system contains many offers that can be used as components. The modular system that is available to us is increasing in terms of components and variants every day. In this sense one can compare the founder with the figure of the composer,

Seen in this way, the task of the entrepreneur is first to come up with a concept, second to find the partners who offer the necessary components, and third to coordinate and control the interaction of the components. This drastically reduces the risk of overwhelming the founder with a large number of tasks.

Experience shows that professionalism is crucial. It is the central keyword when it comes to components. Just as the teeth of technically good gears mesh perfectly, the components must also fit together. Professional partners know the problem of coordinating the individual components. Professional shop software must provide interfaces for invoicing, liquidity planning, warehousing, balance sheet preparation and tax returns. Professional providers have mastered this and will make appropriate offers to the founder.

Buying professionalism is expensive. But in the end, being unprofessional is much more expensive. The conclusion from this: if you cannot afford professionalism, your business concept is not mature, it is not generating sufficient income.

Grow big while staying small

However, founding with components has other advantages. It is well known - and described in the scientific literature - that young companies go through several phases of increasing complexity after they are founded, in which they get into typical crises and often fail as a result. The start-up risks are significantly reduced by means of components, because with them the founder accesses established, experienced units that already work with large, efficient companies and a high level of professionalism. He also benefits from their knowledge. Your own company can grow, but the core operated by the founder remains small - and therefore manageable and manageable: "Grow big and stay small".

The advantages of the component model are enormous. Instead of becoming overworked lone wolves, it enables the founder or founders to focus on the entrepreneurial concept and adapt it to market changes. Less investment is required; This makes the otherwise time-consuming search for investors easier. The founder works highly professionally with his components - right from the start. In principle, costs only arise if orders are actually received. Financing costs and risks are reduced considerably for the founder. In comparison to conventional forms, foundations can be carried out more quickly, easily and professionally.

Using media as an example:

Do you want to found a magazine with an international presence?
It used to require a lot of capital, extensive publishing experience, well-paid editors in expensive offices, domestic and international sales, and much more. Today you can do things differently. You will find experts on platforms such as Freelance, Uplink or Expertlead, who you can assess and select based on your previous work. And that applies not only to the journalistic part, but also to graphic designers, picture editors or proofreaders. You can have the finished articles translated by Deepl and post-edited by a specialist translator. You can also buy your web and app design as a component - with an experienced designer who thinks about search engine optimization.Pretty different than before. No publishing house, no printing shop on the ground floor, no loading, no delivery vans in the company yard. What has to come from you is the relevance of the topic and the enthusiasm for it.

The decisive factor is the degree of professionalism of the components; it is crucial for the success of the delegation. The inexperience of many founders is cushioned by the use of professionally managed components. Building a company from components makes founding faster and more flexible in overcoming unexpected obstacles.

Here, too, the comparison with the history of education is illuminating. Education has become accessible and affordable for everyone because parents do not have to put together and finance what their children need for their education themselves: the school building, the teachers, the books, the equipment for physics and chemistry classes. What Alexander and Wilhelm v. Humboldt enjoyed as children – private lessons organized and paid for by their parents – the educational reformer wanted to make Wilhelm accessible to everyone. The education system he launched works, one could put it, with components.

"Foundations with components" gives so many more people than before the opportunity to actively participate in economic life. Of course, economic thinking and acting - understood as economical use of resources - remains necessary, but much of the process of a company, from production to administration to logistics, is taken over by the components and the professionalism of the service providers embedded in them. As a founder, you need to focus on running your business instead of getting bogged down in day-to-day business. The idea that the founder can do everything and has to do everything himself comes from the last century, actually from the penultimate one. It's time to give them up.