The Garden and The Desert
If you’ve ever watched an extremely high performer go from killing it one year to struggling the next, you know what I’m talking about. There’s a unique feeling of ambiguity, chaos and stress that comes with doubling or tripling your team every six months.
— Molly Graham
In a growing startup, you should give away your legos. Your company is creating lots of opportunities, and you’ll be best served by allowing others to take on many of the “legos” that you’ve accumulated so that you can find bigger and better ones.
Life in a Growing World vs. Life in a Shrinking World
There are lots of inspiring blog posts about how to equip yourself to grow your scaling startup.
There are not so many about how to deal with a shrinking company, an industry that’s becoming obsolete, or a country in decline.
I spent half an hour trying to get Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity to find me a quote about dealing with the state of decline. I got some quotes like this:
In a crumbling house, everyone fights for the last unbroken chair.
There’s only one problem: that quote is fake. The quote is described by ChatGPT as an “old European proverb” but it seems to be entirely fabricated! Apparently, there are a lot fewer pithy quotes about being in a state of decline.
The Garden
In the garden, everything is growing. You have to give away your legos, because there is so much to build and you need help.
In 2024, OpenAI and Nvidia and Anthropic are the garden. Wind and solar energy are the garden. Celina, Texas — which grew by over 26% in a year — is the garden.
China was a garden a decade ago, though I’m not sure it is anymore.
In the garden, your mindset is oriented towards growth around you.
After World War II, much of the world was a garden.
In the latter part of the 20th century, much of East Asia (Japan, Korea, Taiwan) was a garden.
In Silicon Valley, where I live, we’ve had a garden for business. But the surrounding infrastructure — especially around housing — hasn’t been a garden at all.
In the garden, you can think long term. You can act with the assumption that tomorrow will be much better than today. You can pay it forward: you’ll give someone a dollar now, and next week someone else will give you two dollars. The world is expanding.
Every seed holds potential. Collaboration thrives because there is more to build than any one person can do alone.
The Desert
There are different types of deserts, and different stages as something moves from garden to desert.
There are industries in decline, countries in decline, and companies in decline. And there are industries, countries, and companies that have already declined.
There are deserts that are in bad shape because they are neglected, deserts in bad shape because of technological and consumer changes, and deserts in bad shape that are being watered and tended but (because of poor “gardening”) have nothing growing.
Manufacturing in the US has become something of a desert. Journalism has moved much closer to the desert (but I think it can still have a huge positive impact). Many industries and sectors affected by AI may soon turn into desers.
Europe is largely a desert with respect to technology and innovation. There are many parts of American government that are being watered, but not effectively leading to a desert. High speed rail in California is a notable example.
One can argue that the decreasing total fertility rate — currently about 1.5 children per woman in the developed world — is pushing much of the world towards a desert.
In the desert, scarcity defines behavior. Every drop of water is fought over. People cling to what they have, rather than collaborate to build something new. Blame and zero-sum thinking dominate. Short-term survival takes precedence over long-term vision.
When Your World Becomes a Desert
When it looks like the world around you is becoming a desert, most of the options are bad:
Deny: You can deny that things are changing
Push Back: You can try to try to push back against the change that’s happening, to turn the desert back into a garden
Adapt: You can accept change and adapt to the different circumstances
Leave: You can move to the garden
I believe that most people do two of these: they partially deny that change is happening, and they take some actions to adapt to different circumstances. They don’t fight much, and they don’t move to the garden.
Perhaps most notably, they adapt to different circumstances by taking others’ legos.
Much of today’s grievance-centered politics — on both the right and the left — is based on an angry belief roughly expressed as “there’s a desert around me, and it’s the other side’s fault”. Plants are dying, our world is turning into a desert, and someone (depending on your politics: immigrants, greedy capitalists, the government, healthcare executives) wants to take away the few remaining legos you have.
It follows that the most straightforward reaction to being in a desert is to adapt behavior and take more legos.
Move to the Garden
Of course, there’s a different approach you can take: move to the garden.
The garden is — by and large — where opportunity lives.
It’s not feasible for everyone to move to the garden, but it’s feasible for most young adults and it’s still feasible for many of us even as we get older.
Moving to the garden doesn’t literally mean moving. Maybe you stay in your Rust Belt hometown, but you embrace the lifestyle and profession of the growing garden.
I believe that life in the garden is better than life in the desert. Moreover, because the garden is a place where opportunities are expanding, people make choices that are better for others as well as themselves.
How to Move to the Garden
Recognize the garden: Learn to spot where opportunity is growing. Look for places, industries, and teams where long-term investment is happening, where optimism thrives, and where people are oriented towards growth.
Move with purpose: Moving to the garden doesn’t always mean changing your geography. It can mean changing your mindset, learning new skills, or joining emerging fields. It can mean planting yourself in a growing team, even if it feels risky.
Know the signs: Be aware of whether you are in a garden or a desert. A garden rewards patience, investment, and creativity. A desert demands short-term survival and zero-sum thinking. If you find yourself clutching your legos, it’s worth asking if you’re in the right place.
I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention the importance of abundance: I mentioned that the Bay Area’s infrastructure and housing haven’t kept up with economic opportunity. That slow growth is the result of NIMBY’s winning for the past fifty years. And it’s meant that fewer people have been able to move to the Bay Area’s amazing garden environment.
A Final Thought
While deserts exist, the seeds of a garden are within reach. Life in the garden is better than life in the desert. Move there if and when you can.
Ive never heard these metaphors before but they are great and timely (for me)