Greek mythology, hubris and entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is often described as a journey, and Homer reminds us that reaching the destination matters, but so does the way we travel to get there.

As a child, I was obsessed with Greek mythology, and the stories of gods, monsters, and flawed heroes captured my imagination.

For many years, a battered second-hand copy of Homer’s Odyssey sat on my bookshelf, but like many others who have read it over the centuries, I probably understood only part of what it was trying to say.

Sir Christopher Nolan’s film has brought this ancient epic back into the public eye and introduced Odysseus’s long journey home to another generation. It has also reminded me, as I watched this incredible interpretation at the Odeon IMAX in Cardiff last week, that, beneath the cyclopes, sirens and angry gods, The Odyssey contains lessons relevant to anyone attempting to build a business.

The poem tells the story of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and the ten years he spends trying to return home after the Trojan War. His route is disrupted by storms, monsters, temptation, his own mistakes and the failures of those around him.

He has a destination but no reliable map, limited resources and a team that does not always follow instructions. In that respect, his experience may feel more familiar to founders than many modern business textbooks.

The first lesson is the importance of knowing what your own Ithaca looks like. Odysseus is repeatedly blown off course, yet never loses sight of home. For founders, that destination should be more than a turnover target, an investment round, or the eventual sale of the company. It should be a clear understanding of what the business exists to do, whom it serves, and what success will ultimately mean.

Without that clarity, every new opportunity can appear attractive and whilst a partnership, a new market, or an investor may all seem worth pursuing, it is not necessarily progress. Some of the greatest threats to a growing business are apparently exciting opportunities that take it further from its primary purpose.

The Odyssey is full of such distractions – the Lotus-Eaters offer forgetfulness, Circe and Calypso offer comfort and escape, and the Sirens offer knowledge so seductive that sailors abandon reason and head towards destruction. Their commercial equivalents are vanity projects, premature expansion, unsuitable partnerships, flattering publicity, and investments that bring in money but undermine purpose.

One of the most important abilities any founder can develop is the capacity to say no, particularly when an opportunity appeals to the ego, which is one of Odysseus’s greatest weaknesses. Of course, entrepreneurs are encouraged to be confident, ambitious and visible, and those qualities matter when persuading others to believe in something that does not yet fully exist.

But confidence can quickly become hubris, and early success can persuade founders that they possess exceptional judgement in every area, or that anyone challenging them simply lacks vision. In fact, business history is full of leaders undone not by their first failure, but by their inability to learn from their first success.

Odysseus’s real advantage is not physical strength but intelligence, and he defeats the Cyclops because he outthinks him and survives because he adapts. Start-ups rarely possess the money, scale or market power of established competitors, and their advantage lies in speed, creativity, customer insight and the willingness to question assumptions that larger organisations have stopped noticing.

Yet adaptability should not be confused with constant reinvention, and Odysseus changes his methods while keeping the same destination. A product may have to evolve, and a route to market may have to be abandoned, but constant shifts in direction without a clear purpose are drift, not agility.

There is also a lesson in his crew’s behaviour when they open the bag of winds when Ithaca is almost within reach and later ignore warnings by slaughtering the cattle of Helios. Again and again, the mission is undermined by poor discipline, mistrust and a failure to accept responsibility. Businesses are often weakened by unclear responsibilities, poor communication and a reluctance to confront repeated underperformance, and whilst loyalty to your team matters, it cannot mean tolerating behaviour that ultimately damages the business.

Perhaps the most modern lesson comes from the Sirens. Odysseus knows he will be unable to resist their song, so he asks his crew to bind him to the mast and ignore his demands to be released. He does not rely on willpower but creates a system that prevents him from acting on temptation, which is governance in its simplest form.

Spending limits, delegated authority, shareholder agreements and independent oversight may feel bureaucratic to leaders who value freedom and speed, but in reality they protect the company not only from dishonest or incompetent people but also from the founder’s own impulses.

The final lesson concerns the cost of the journey and Odysseus eventually reaches Ithaca, but only after twenty years away, having lost his ships and every member of his crew. He achieves his objective, but at an extraordinary price. Whilst founders are frequently told that persistence is the defining entrepreneurial virtue, it should never become an excuse to ignore the consequences.

A founder can build a valuable company while damaging their health, family, friendships, or reputation, only to reach the destination and discover that too much has been sacrificed along the way. Success cannot be judged only by whether Ithaca was reached, but by who arrived with us and what sort of person we became on the voyage.

That is why The Odyssey has endured and why one of the world’s best directors has brought it back into contemporary culture. It is not merely an adventure about monsters and gods but a story about leadership under pressure, the dangers of pride, and the need to stay focused when easier destinations beckon.

Indeed, entrepreneurship is often described as a journey, and Homer reminds us that reaching the destination matters, but so does the way we travel to get there.