The religious among us may have an altar at home. An altar is a special place for the highest in our lives; the presence of an altar is a continuous reminder that there is a higher meaning, a higher power that takes precedence over the mundanity of everyday life, a mundanity that can suck us into its relentless ratrace. Altars powerfully orient us to a reality beyond the visible.

“Startup” may be thought of as an organization, a company in its formative stages, and the term these days calls to mind Silicon Valley and its wellspring of innovators. Yet “Startup” is also a state of mind, a way of being to create something out of nothing, a mode of creation that requires us to abandon the creature comforts of everydayness, of procrastination and conformity, of luxuriating in the beauty of an idea-in-potentia. If the mundanity of “looking good” and “being right” are more important to us than “creating the future”, then we abandon the “Startup” state of mind, and get sucked into the mundanity of “I coulda been a contendah.”

So I have built an altar to Startup in my home, and it is simply a Business Model Canvas posted to the wall. Every time I catch a glance of it, it reminds me of the “Startup” state of mind, that I could be testing, that I could be doing, that I could be facing the moments of truth of proving whether the future I envision is a vision or an illusion. The “Startup” state of mind stands above and beyond everydayness, and this altar serves as an inescapable monument to what could be.

You can get a copy of the business model canvas here, and go here to get a large print version.