The Story of Hannibal and the Elephants
The story of Hannibal should be told more often, especially to entrepreneurs in new startups. After all, there are several parallels we can draw from lessons taught through history. Picture this:
Imagine Hannibal is your startup- a compilation of your co-founders, board, mentors and employees as well as the idea, backbone and strategy behind your small company.
The Roman Empire is the large industry you wish to disrupt. Hannibal’s tactic was seemingly obvious. He developed a war strategy that played to his strengths and his opponent’s weaknesses by essentially learning what his opponents did wrong over time and using that intelligence to his advantage to conquer his enemies (and scale).
Hannibal ran into a problem- as many startups do at one time or another. The problem was that Hannibal needed to move an army which included war elephants from Iberia through the Alps and into...