Ever since my little one was gifted a LEGO set on his birthday, the house has been taken over by little assemblies of LEGO formations. From a spaceship on the coffee table to a dinosaur welcoming you at the entrance, the most unexpected places have suddenly come alive with his creativity. It is endearing to watch him build these right from scratch but it is more heartening to see him learn a whole lot of it. The frustration of a tower breaking just when he is about to finish and then rebuilding the whole thing patiently. Or the desperation when one missing part is holding him back from completing the whole picture made me realise that there are so many start-up lessons for us to take away from LEGO.
1) You may not end up building what you started
A few days back he started out with a mission to make a swimming pool with slides on the side. However, the Lego bricks would not stay at a slant, we decided to replace the slides with a fancy four-level diving board instead. What was meant to be a recreational water park pool was now a Olympic pool for professionals. 🙂 We’ve heard this story of pivot before. What started as a video dating site is now the world’s biggest video sharing website- any guesses? Or closer home, redBus which started out selling the bus booking software to operators eventually focused on customer segment. Many start-ups have found their feet by changing direction altogether. The key is to remain flexible and be prepared for the outcome.
2) The base has to be strong
“Bigger pieces at the bottom” I keep reminding my son when his structures are about to topple over. My words went unheard initially until he realised that a solid ground was important to build anything on. It is easy to get carried away by larger goals while building (a company), but at the end of the race what will make you established is the strong foundation you’ve built at the start. It could be your values or your skills – those are the things that will last much longer than any product or company. Stability is really important when you plan something big.
3) Team work is everything
“Let’s make a building together” he says. We start on a happy note and end up arguing over how tall it should be. While I have the seven storeyed building we live in in my mind, he is looking at the tall 25-storeyed tower opposite. This is a great example of “co-founder issues” that are known to tear apart good companies. In our case, even though the ultimate goal was same we never discussed how we wanted our building to look like. It is important for two (or more) people working on one thing to share the vision and mission of the company.
Image source (Also a good read on how to track time using Lego) 🙂
4) How the bricks fit into each other
What I love about LEGO is how the bricks are made keeping in basic fundamentals of space, structure and geometry. Each brick is designed in such a manner that it locks into every other brick perfectly. A brick made in the 1950s will easily interlock with a brick made today. This beautiful feature makes the game scalable and replicable. Isn’t that the very core concept of microservices architecture- independent structures or silos that fit seamlessly with each other when integrated?
5) Patience and lots of it
To my surprise, my son exhibits a lot of patience for his age- he can sit at the Lego table for almost an hour building and rebuilding until he gets what he wants. Lego teaches you to be patient – a virtue many of us forget in pursuit of success. One wrong move and everything you have built may come crashing down. But that doesn’t stop you from taking risks, does it? Patience and perseverance is what you will need to build it back and a lot better version if needed. Thomas Edison is known to have tried more than 9000 experiments before inventing the light-bulb successfully. Entrepreneurs are known to be an optimistic lot and we owe it to our tribe to not give up.
Lastly, there is a lot to learn from the history of the LEGO itself. Launched in 1949, the Danish company went from skyrocketing profits to facing a potential shut down in the early 2000s. Their inspiring comeback story is a great reminder of staying rooted even as you rise.