Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a show about a lot of things. It is about women’s empowerment at the turn of the century, it is about unclear distinctions in the gradients of good and evil, it portrays real problems in young romantic relationships and it offers choice words in regards to organized religion. The Buffy base is large and vocal, and you can read treatises on all these topics on various fan sites and in plenty of academic papers.

Outside of those themes, Buffy is about a high school student tasked with protecting the world from evil: vampires, demons, minor gods, angry kids who hang out in their mothers’ basements, etc. As a “Slayer,” Buffy is afforded a “Watcher” named Rupert Giles, who is an expert on all things evil, and who trains her for the task of fighting it. But Buffy often eschews his advice (and the advice of his bosses) to do things her way. Throughout, she changes the rules of the centuries-old battle between good and evil, and therefore acts as a disrupter. What’s more, she assembles a team of young people (and a werewolf, and a demon and a few vampires who at least look young) to aid her in the task. Essentially, Buffy creates a start-up with the goal of eradicating evil, something that venerable institutions have been woefully unsuccessful at. Along the way, Buffy’s team encounters many of the problems young entrepreneurs face on a regular basis. What follows is a list of lessons this business-minded reporter picked up while watching Buffy.

1. Build your company around people you can trust.

“Ah, you have some weird friends.”

In the first season, Buffy is a transfer student at Sunnydale High. She collects two unlikely allies to help her fight evil, a couple of nerdlings who happen to be nice to her, fellow sophomores Willow Rosenberg and Xander Harris. In terms of building organizational culture from the ground up, she couldn’t have made a better choice – she trusts both innately. What’s more, because both individuals enter early on, they are able to build expertise to fill the gaps in Buffy’s organization (later, they calls themselves “The Scooby Gang”). Willow is well-versed in research and the internet (the show first airs in 1997, so “the internet” is a still a unique skill). Later, she trains to become a powerful witch and aids Buffy in combat. Xander is less talented, but performs odd jobs and helps keep the team grounded in reality, which is an important, and oft-overlooked role for start-ups (for more on that, see the first pages of Andrew Keen’s Cult of the Amateur). Through numerous betrayals of trust, Willow and Xander keep the Scooby Gang together. Trust is essential to keeping a start-up vibrant. The alternative? Ask the guys from YouSendIt.

2. As your company gains traction, pull in other experts. But don’t allow gunslingers to define your organization.

“But he’s not just a regular vampire. He has special powers, right?”

Sunnydale is located on the Hellmouth, which is kind of like the Silicon Valley of evil (although the fictional town is closer to Los Angeles than San Francisco). Most of the world’s baddest demons enter the plane of mortal existence from here. Not only is it the prime location for Buffy to do business, it’s also prime territory for collecting talent. As current tasks warrant, Buffy enlists the help of other slayers, two vampires, a demon, a werewolf, a military operative, a witch, a cheerleader and a high school principal. All prove useful in some way or another — reconnaissance, strategy, expertise, talent –but few stay around. Some have competing loyalties and ulterior motives, others prove unreliable. A new hire may be useful, but that doesn’t mean you can count on him or her being around forever. As Google and Facebook have grown from fledgling start-ups into megalithic companies, both have proven successful at creating organizations that can weather the exit of second-wave higher-ups.

3. Trust your instincts, don’t defer to dogma.

“You’re Watchers. Without a Slayer, you’re pretty much just watching Masterpiece Theater. You can’t do anything with the information you have except maybe publish it in the Everyone Thinks We’re Insane-O’s Home Journal. So here’s how it’s going to work. You’re going to tell me everything you know. Then you’re going to go away.”

Some start-ups are lucky enough to operate in their own space, that is, they are creating their own category. But most aren’t –they’re working in spaces with tired, gigantic competitors who lost their innovative spirit some time ago. Either way, start-ups deal with angel investors and VCs who want to see them succeed (they have money riding on it). Those investors have gobs of expertise when it comes to business, and it is easy to defer to that expertise, even if it doesn’t pass a gut-check. Many investors are hoping to repeat past business success, and will offer advice that may be helpful in the future, but wrong for your company in its present stage. In Buffy, these experts are The Watchers Council, an aging institution devoted to fighting evil, but who have spent so much time digging through old tomes that they have lost touch with the realities of the ground war. In Season 5, Episode 12, “Checkpoint,” the Council attempts to subject Buffy to a series of inane tasks as part of a review, because they feel her methods are becoming increasingly unorthodox. After humoring the Watchers for some time, Buffy finally suggests that they’re only subjecting her to these tests to make themselves feel more important. Embarrassed, the Watchers back off.

4. Don’t silo, but make sure everyone in the organization understands his/her role.

“You do research now? Would you like a cappuccino and a pack of cigarettes to go with that?”

Open communication is good. Your organization’s various teams should all be aware of what each is doing. Warnings against “silo-ing” are old news. But in start-up culture, where roles are not always clearly defined (and even in larger businesses that are understaffed, and employees do more than one job) eager communication can sometimes devolve into performing jobs that you’re no expert in. There are scant few heroes willing to fight the overwhelming onslaught of demons in Buffy, and The Scooby Gang falls into this trap a lot. It costs them dearly. Weak characters get involved in skirmishes, resulting in grievous injuries and the occasional death. Others try their hand at magic to disastrous effect. Even if you don’t have enough players in your organization to fill every role you need, make sure everyone knows who is doubling down on what, and that they have the necessary training to excel.

5. Your success will inspire imitators, don’t shrug them off.

“We’re your arch-nemesises…ses. You may have beaten us this time, Slayer, but next time… um… uh, next time…”

“Maybe not!”

Perhaps the darkest days in Buffy come during Season 6, when three geeky Sunnydale high graduates decide over a game of Dungeons and Dragons that they will become super-villains and take over Sunnydale. They know Buffy is the town’s hero, and decide to position themselves as her arch-nemeses. Originally used as comic relief, these characters grow increasingly angry and frustrated, until one takes a gun to Buffy’s house, killing a member of The Scooby Gang and nearly killing Buffy too. It is a shocking twist in the show, all three are unassuming kids who don’t seem nearly as threatening as even the lowliest vampire. But there’s no guessing what up-starts are capable of if they want something bad enough and if they have your organization in their sights. Myspace came before Facebook, Yahoo! came before Google, Explorer came before Firefox, and Firefox came before Chrome.