“Spaghetti car,” and other zany start-up metaphors
I am well known for a few things on the Analytics team at Blue Apron. Beyond my wandering personal anecdotes (which I discuss in a post about my approach to showing vulnerability as a leader), the most noteworthy is my penchant for weird metaphors characterizing my experiences at Blue Apron. I’ll unpack some of my favorites below.
Not many people know this, but my undergrad degree was in English and Media Studies, and I have my Masters in English Language and Literature. I took a ton of creative writing classes (both poetry and fiction), and wrote half a novel. I know that it runs against stereotype to admit this, but deep down I am more creative than I am analytical.
Occasionally, my love for novel applications of the English language shines through. Without further ado, here are four of my favorite “zany start-up metaphors” that I’ve shared with the team in attempt to capture the start-up experience.
“The Hangover”
As a service function within a rapidly evolving business, sometimes our team struggles to strike the right tone when collaborating with our business partners. Sometimes it is our role to be the sober voice that counters the optimism and exuberance of the business — for example, when sizing the revenue impact of opportunities that we are all excited about. I call this being the “Designated Driver.” We hold the car keys, and make sure to get everyone home safely after they have a good time.
But, sometimes it’s not the right time for our team be at the wheel. We need to sit back and play a supporting role. Because this usually occurs in the aftermath of un-tempered optimism, I call this “the Hangover.” Because sometimes you have to walk quietly and hold a friend’s hair back when they had too much fun the night before.
It’s hard to know when our team should play “DD” or play a supporting role, but this metaphor resonated with an audience of twenty-somethings. Wonder why :)
“The Vietnam War,” a.k.a. Measuring What Matters
This is not actually a metaphor of my own design, but a relevant anecdote about the McNamara fallacy that I tried to share with the team (read: flagrantly misquoted) while I was watching the Ken Burns Vietnam War series on PBS. It’s based on a famous observation by Albert Einstein that “Not everything that matters can be measured, but not everything that can be measured matters.”
Here’s the idea: During the Vietnam war, the US military had difficulty measuring success as they struggled to adapt their tactics to guerrilla warfare. One of the few things that they were able to measure was the number of causalities that occurred on both sides, which were combined into a “kill ratio.” For example, if 1 US soldier and 10 Viet Cong died in a confrontation, the “kill ratio” would be 1:10. Beyond the callous treatment of human casualties on both sides, this metric failed to capture the actual dynamics of the war — which the United States was losing.
“Surfing”
I don’t surf, so this is purely based on my own imagination and the movie Blue Crush. But I still think it works.
The basic idea is that when you start a new job at a start-up, you’re sitting on a surf board in the middle of the ocean for the first time. Nothing’s happening, and you’re bored — nervously waiting for your first wave, and rehearsing the choreography in your mind.
Suddenly, the wave comes. It’s faster and much more powerful than you anticipated, and because you’re caught off guard you’re slow to catch the wave’s break. You miss it, and get pulled under by the tide and washed up on the shore. You’re embarrassed but unwilling to admit defeat, so you paddle out again. This time, you’re less surprised by the wave and paddle frantically to ride the break. Maybe you pop up on to your feet, and maybe you lose your balance and fall. So you swim back out, and try it again.
Eventually you’re standing, but you recognize fully that the waves are a force much more powerful than you. Just like your hypergrowth start-up: the product of luck, momentum, and the tenacity of a group of people who weren’t too embarrassed to fail.
“Spaghetti car”
Without question, this is my most polarizing metaphor (and thus my favorite). It’s my best characterization of what it was like to become an insider at Blue Apron in 2016, and surreal experience of watching the business turn the corner from “struggling start-up” to “making it.”
Imagine that you are at a car dealership, looking for a new car. You see a beautiful vehicle in the corner of the lot: it’s sleek, interesting, and you’ve never seen anything like it before. You jump behind the wheel for a test drive, and everything runs fine. You have a great time driving it, and you can’t wait to show your unique purchase off to your friends. You’re sold, but want to do some due diligence first.
You walk to the front of the car, and open up the hood. Much to your surprise, there’s not an engine inside. It’s just…spaghetti.
Questions flood your mind. Does the car dealership know that the care is made of spaghetti? Are they ripping you off, or did you miss a headline in Tech Crunch that spaghetti is the future of cars? If no one else cares that it’s a spaghetti car, should you? How will you locate a spaghetti-based mechanic if you buy it?
And, of course, the most confounding question: HOW ON EARTH IS THE CAR RUNNING IF IT’S MADE OF SPAGHETTI?
The metaphor captures the absurdity of duct tape layered on duct tape layered on duct tape that holds together a company going through hyper-growth. The impossible is made possible, but under the hood it ain’t pretty.
Is anyone hungry? I could really go for lunch.
