Startups: A quick lesson from nature — you MUST explore to survive

During a recent holiday I was fortunate enough to come across a huge colony of leafcutter ants. Next to humans, leafcutter ants form the largest and most complex animal societies on Earth.

They also provide startup founders with some valuable business lessons.

What was interesting to learn was that every single ant in the colony has a very specific role. For the colony to function each ant has to do their job, the sum of the parts was much greater than just the individuals.

For example, there are builders who dig, and only dig, these allow the colony to expand. There are ants that cut leaves, ants that carry leaves, tiny little ants that clean the the leaves in transit and remove any harmful fungus that could destroy the entire colony. Then there are the huge soldier ants, these protect the ants from intruders and protect their entire family.

The vast majority (>99%) of the ants are solely focused on the core mission of keeping the colony alive, functioning and growing. The parallels here to startups are stark and the importance of razor focus and execution to ensure success is a much written about topic. Distraction is the enemy and kills many a startup.

However, the most interesting group of ants to me were the explorers. This small subset of ants venture up to a few km from the nest to look for new sources of food and possible sites for new nests. The reason they do this is because if they didn’t the colony would eventually get to a point of not being able to sustain itself and ultimately die.

This is a valuable lesson for founders; while you have to focus on the core, its also your role and duty to look to the horizon and look for opportunities or threats. If you don’t do this then your business may be healthy today but will ultimately die, its just a matter of when.

Give yourself time and space to do this. Make sure you are always looking at your business and try to disrupt yourself. You have likely built something by disrupting someone else. Be under no illusion someone out there is trying to disrupt you!

The balance of resources between core and exploring is up to you and the stage of your business, but make sure you do it. Set aside time.

You may be busy, you may be fighting fires but if you don’t explore your business will die.

Good luck!