Be Obsessed with Curiosity

Founders need to be obsessed with curiosity

Curiosity should be every founder’s obsession

Last week when I spoke to Piers Bearne, founder of Collingwood, on the Bootstrap Confidential podcast https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7424386451624202243 and asked him what single trait he most looked for in an entrepreneur, he immediately answered curiosity. Every single founder I speak to or interview cites curiosity as the no. 1 characteristic that they look for and want in a culture or new team member. In 2016, when Alan Shields (MAICD) and I decided after 10 years bootstrapping to bring some growth investment on board to RFI Global, we were asked by potential investors what word best summed up our culture and the answer was curiosity. Again, when we were asked what the key quality was we looked for in team members – curiosity. So, what is this obsession that founders have with curiosity and why is it so important to culture?

 Anyone founding a business is driven by a what if agenda. From even thinking about starting a business, to trying to identifying a solution to a problem that you have uncovered, none of it is possible without a basic curiosity of asking the same initial questions: why do we do it like that and what if we did it differently? Should I be the one to try and improve or fix it?

Very few businesses invent something completely new. Yes there are big exceptions, especially in Silicon Valley like WhatsApp, Twitter or Uber, but even the i-pod was just a better MP3 player, Facebook was better the Friends Reunited, Google was better than Yahoo, Space X was better at creating rockets than NASA.

At the heart of all these is a fundamental look and re-evaluation of the entire end-to-end  process. NASA had built rockets using a traditional design evolution where each version gradually improved on the last one. Firstly, we had flying bombs in WWII, then came V2s, followed by Sputnik, Vostok with Yuri Gagarin, Freedom, Saturn, and Gemini, until Apollo and the moon landings. Each iteration took what had been learned previously and then improved on it with greater capability and success. When Musk decided to build rockets he simply asked the question of what if we throw out the rule book and using everything we now know to build a rocket completely from scratch. He used iterative design and driven by curiosity asked the question of every part of the design and build -  why do it like this and is there a better way to do it? The result was the world’s first reusable rocket, at a cost reduction of 92%, using parts produced on a digital printer.

What Musk does, and advocates, is to look at how something is done and ask why it is done like that. Does it make sense, and, most importantly, given the available technologies, is that the best way to do it? Can we completely reinvent the process by using iterative design?

Curiosity drives all this.

There are huge numbers of processes across vast numbers of industries that have been relying on traditional progressive design and, as a result, are outdated, unchallenged, and ripe for disruption. They have failed to take advantage of new technologies that re-engineer their existing processes, but instead have just slightly improved their existing methodology. This was the case even before Gen AI and Agentic AI which have exponentially increased the number of opportunities for this.

Founders should be curious and look for areas where companies address a recognised need but are bad at it. They may not realise that they’re bad at it, and neither do their customers. When you ask, “Why do you do it like that?” or ‘Why do you use them?’ and the answer is “Because that’s the way we’ve always done it,” then you’re probably in the right spot. Curiosity is the driver to start of your business.

Once you have your business up and running you now need to embed curiosity into your culture’s DNA. Key to this is ensuring that you are always bringing on new team members who are curious and embrace a culture of curiosity. As you start to grow and scale every business should be looking to constantly innovate. You need to be always improving every part of your business to grow faster, produce better products, drive greater margins, to adapt and stay ahead of the competition and on top of your customers needs.

Most people think that innovation requires significant major change in thinking but that is not the case. Innovation is simply the step by step trial and error of continual marginal gains. If you look at your business and try and improve the entire business’s performance by 10% then you undoubtedly get some gains. However if you break your business down into small discrete parts and task each team to improve their part by 10% then you will get overall exponential gains.

Every single member of your team need to be not just driven by curiosity and to be always questioning every part of the process,  but most importantly, to know that thanks to the culture of your business, curiosity will be embraced and people will be allowed to try new things to see if they can find a marginal incremental gain.

In 1994 Steve Jobs said, ‘Everything around you was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it. The minute that you understand that, something will pop out on the other side. That's maybe the most important thing ‘

Everything can be redesigned, improved on and a culture of curiosity and a focus on curiosity is what underpins all of this. Curiosity is what gets you to start in the first place and a culture of curiosity will be the driver of your growth, adaptability, innovation and continued success. So get obsessed with it 😊