4 lessons startups can learn from the German soccer team

Monday Jun 28, 2010 by Bettina Hein - Founder and CEO, Pixability

I spend most of my waking hours working on my startups (currently Pixability.com), but every few years in the summer, I get a bit distracted by the World Cup for a few weeks.

This year, I picked up Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski – mainly to calm my nerves before the Germany/England game in the round of 16 finals. The subtitle that lured me was “Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win,..” For the non-soccer fans: Germany has played in seven of the last 14 finals of the World Cup and won 3 titles, while England won only once in 1966 despite having invented the game in the 19th century.

I’m not an expert on Brazilian soccer but while reading the book it struck me how much the strategy of German soccer applies to successfully running a startup.

So copy these four German soccer strategies if you want to win in the startup game.

1.    It’s a Team Sport, Stupid

Kuper and Szymanski have identified 3 basic game styles a) kick-and-rush b) solo dribbler c) passing.  

The English traditionally prefer kick-and-rush, which is hectic and can lead to surprise goals but leaves much to chance.  Also, a lot of energy is expended in the rushed running. Southern European teams have players that love to show off their individual dribbling moves but get felled along the way.

The Germans have perfected the team-based approach: building a play slowly by passing the ball off between players until they reach the penalty zone. By that time, the strikers are perfectly in place to go for the goal.

In startups, it pays to do the same. Assemble a great management team that plays well together and passes off tasks instead of going for individual wins. Don't expend all your energy by rushing around hectically, instead build your startup systematically and don't rely on one-offs like that great mention in the Wall Street Journal that will save everything.

2.    Be Slightly Boring and Stay Focused on Winning

German teams are not known for their dazzling style but rather for their ability to execute with discipline and strong work ethic. They are focused on winning rather than on showing off.

In the startup world there are plenty of examples that not the flashiest startup with the best SuperBowl ad wins (remember Pets.com?) but rather the startup that stays focused on the ball or rather the customer. Zappos for example excels at customer service.

3.    In Diversity Lies Strength

According to Kuper and Szymanski, English soccer’s decline lies in the fact that they are recruiting from an ever-dwindling talent pool: the English working class. In Germany, soccer is a middle-class sport that more than 20% of the population participates in.

In startups, it pays to recruit a diverse staff to avoid group-think and balance out strengths. Plus, it pays to open your eyes to a much wider talent. At my last startup, at one point we had 11 people on staff with 7 different nationalities (now they’re at 110). A Pixability we’re currently 7 people with 4 different passports.  We’re 3 women and 4 men. For more on this topic, read Apollo Sinkevicius’s recent post on hiring outside of your comfort zone.

4.    Having Depth

The German national soccer team is known as a “tournament team” which means they don’t generally do well in one-off international matches but excel at tournaments like the World Cup. One of the most prominent reasons is that German soccer players are trained to play several positions well. This strength is very important as a tournament wears on because players get hurt or are barred because of previous yellow cards. The German team can win against supposedly better teams because they substitute in other players better than the rest.

A small company has to last the distance as well. It will be years before you can hire specialists that excel in one discipline only. Therefore find generalists that are versatile. I have always hired employees that could wear several hats. At my last startup we were developing speech software so every employee had to have one technical strength (guru for smoothing algorithms in signal processing) and a native language no one else in the company spoke.  My technical skill was finance and I spoke American English without an accent. At Pixability, having a masters degree in Painting and Fine Arts and at the same time being a ‘take no prisoners’ sales demon will get you my attention.

Now that I’ve given you my German soccer success recipes, can someone from Brazil teach me how to do it even better, please?

Bettina Hein is a repeat entrepreneur based in Cambridge, MA and Founder/CEO of Pixability, Inc. Pixability helps small and medium-sized companies market themselves with video. Bettina was born in Germany and remains fondly loyal to her home team Borussia Dortmund.

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