11 Jan Build Business VC’s Way Or God’s Way?

I learnt that building business VC’s way is a subset of building business God’s ways. Meaning it can be that God’s way for a particular business is to be built VC’s way. However it can also be that God’s way for another business is not to be built VC’s way.

So the only thing important is to be intimate to God so that we are constantly aware of which way He wants us to build and then we need to listen to His way, ignore the noises of the world and obey His ways.

Some possible differences:

Team

The common way to view a good team is that they have some related experiences and it helps if they have good network and have been to good schools and more importantly good startups. This is simply human heuristics to help us gauge the ability of the team.

God looks at the heart of a person to be faithful and obedient to His commandments. Often, the people He chose are in direct opposite to the profile the world world choose. From the youngest son David, to Jesus choosing fishermen and tax collectors to be His disciples, we see it all the time in scripture. In our weakness His strength is displayed.

Speed

The world says that time is money and speed is the way. Everything is about being faster and faster. We need to be faster to test and fail. We need to be faster to capture market share.

God’s timing is perfect. We usually live with time as Chronos time which is the measured time 24 hours which is usually interpreted as a linear time in our logical minds though sometimes in our experience time is not linear. (e.g. happy times feel fast and painful times feel slow). The Greeks also have another word for time: Kairos, which is defined by Merriam-webster as “a time when conditions are right for the accomplishment of a crucial action : the opportune and decisive moment”

God’s time is almost always experienced as Kairos time in my personal experience. Sometimes nothing seems to be moving and we lament (which is because God is preparing some other people and circumstances away from our immediate human knowledge). Sometimes things happen immediately or very fast and we marvel.

In God’s ways, sometimes He will tell us to slow down (Be still and know that I am God). Sometimes He will speed things up for us. This is how awesome our Almighty God is. Trust that He is totally in control.

Goals and Outcomes

In business, stakeholder’s returns are usually the sole goal and outcome, which is to say profits the the most important.

In social enterprise, perhaps both profits and impact are important.

I’m still learning what’s the goal in a Kingdom business but I guess the Kingdom is the most important and the rest are side outcomes?