Readers of a certain age and a certain taste in film (that is to say, readers like me) will recall Aussie bushman Mick ‘Crocodile’ Dundee’s confrontation with a knife-wielding New York mugger in the film of the same name.

Mick’s streetwise girlfriend, the beau who has lured him from the Outback to the Big Apple, points out that their wannabe assailant is, as they say, carrying a blade.

Characteristically unruffled – perhaps because Paul Hogan had already played pretty much the same ‘Aussie innocent abroad’ for several years in a series of commercials for Foster’s – he responds by pulling out his own, oversize Bowie knife and casually declaring, ‘That’s not a knife….THAT’S a knife.’

Mick Dundee’s words (I still feel I don’t know him well enough to use his nickname) came flashing back to me this week at a dinner hosted for clients and friends of 101. (Not that those two terms should be exclusive.)

Right now our business boasts about 25 people and turns over an annualised £2m or so. (That’s a dozen more people and £2m more revenue than Instagram, so fingers crossed…)

But while we’re pleased with our progress, we’re going to have to go some way to emulate our guest speaker and old chum, Richard Reed, co-founder of the marvellous innocent drinks-and-more business.

Richard’s business has not only made the world a healthier place, it has also grown like billy-o, encouraging Coca-Cola to pay £100m or thereabouts for a majority stake along the way.

As if Richard’s giant entrepreneurial shadow didn’t loom large enough, it was my great (mis)fortune to have the Rathfinny vineyard founder Mark Driver sitting to my other side.

Mark has just acquired 600 acres of prime arable land in East Sussex and planted 72,000 vines, as one does, on what he hopes will one day be England’s largest vineyard. (Check out his progress here: http://www.rathfinnyestate.com/.)

Richard and Mark are too gracious to compare their stellar achievements and starry-eyed ambitions to the mere bagatelle that is 101. But they’d have both been quite within their rights to lean over during coffee and casually declare, ‘That’s not a start-up…THAT’S a start-up.’

Fifteen months in, 101 can report an uptick in resilience and resource. That’s right, we’ve lost some business.

As modern business parlance would have it, Mr. Kipling has been ‘realigned’: responsibility for the gentleman cakemaker’s welfare will shortly transfer back from our choppy shores to the safe harbour of JWT (founded in 1877, and the very agency that invented the brand, lock, stock and Battenburg, in the mid-60s).

We wish him and them well, confident that we leave the brand in better shape than we found it. At the very least we take pride in having politely ushered into early retirement the brand’s unlikely incumbent mascot, one Mrs. Kipling,  returning her man to centre stage thus.

Set up as we are to engage with clients on short term projects as well as long term assignments, a small business like ours nevertheless takes stuff like this personally. It’s impossible not to, and it’s actually quite important that we do: ‘taking it personally’ is, after all, one of our competitive advantages, albeit one that often goes unspoken.

But taking it personally needs a bedfellow if it’s not to prove counter-productive. Happily, that bedfellow is optimism, the very well the start-up drinks from, the river that runs through it.

Optimists view setbacks as ‘temporary, local and changeable’ and so prove personally and corporately resilient, according to Professor Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology and the man who identified the less enviable human trait of ‘learned helplessness’.

So this month’s note to selves reads as follows: keep taking it personally, always look on the bright side, enjoy the resilience that results.

Oh, and get another cake brand.

In the last few months I have felt the long arm of the law in both the US and Australia. There’s no international manhunt, not that I know of. My crime was simply to drive a little too fast in one place (sleepy Maine) and a little too slow in another (go-go Sydney). Both pardoned, it’s worth adding, with varying degrees of grace after some humbling lobbying from the innocent abroad.

It’s the same at the wheel of the start-up. A small company can move too quickly on the one hand, too slowly on the other. Get the bends or never truly leave the ground.

In their own right, of course, both speeds have much to commend them.

Fast is exciting, throws off at least the impression of activity and occasionally gets things done. (Activity and getting things done being quite different things.)

Slow may be celebrated less often but does some stuff better than fast, even in the giddy whirl of the modern corporate. Especially in the giddy whirl of the modern corporate. Think culture, succession management, reputational nurture.

Perhaps the speed at which the start-up travels is the wrong metric anyway. It’s progress that we are ultimately looking for, distance from origin in the desired direction of travel. And most often it’s actually a dance between the two that will take us there: the successful pacing and timely gear shifts of a business, its component parts, projects and people.

To paraphrase a once-celebrated, but more recently castigated management guru, pace is only an asset if you know where to run. Seems you were right about Theo Walcott, though, Mr. Wenger.

Step aside ‘Who moved my cheese?’ Make way for the new management bible: ‘Who ate my Pret a Manger fruit and nut bar?’

Sure, ‘WMMC?’ might be the world’s bestselling book on change, and arguably the world’s most famous business book.

But here in the belly of the start-up, change is something we embrace naturally and management is a more prosaic task.

Spencer Johnson’s book is often used to catalyse change agendas in a big company (sometimes achieving the very opposite). But the dynamics of the start-up have more in common with life in a student flat than a big corporate.

No, a more useful tome for us startupers (an American term, forgive me) would start somewhere else, address the everyday issues that bubble up on the small company frontline.

Such as what to do WHEN SOMEONE HAS EATEN YOUR PRET A MANGER FRUIT AND NUT BAR.

Here at the startup, there’s a healthy sense of the collective, of ‘what’s mine is yours’. There’s no ‘Mel’s stapler’. No ‘Vicky’s heater: DO NOT TOUCH!!!’

Which is great. Until someone…OK, you’ve got it.

I’m guessing my missing fruit and nut bar is already nestling in the stomach of one of The Soupeaters: the small band of brothers eking out a living on the creative breadline as they learn their trade here. These boys wolf meeting leftovers like vultures stripping a carcass, casually driving new business prospects from reception every time they microwave Mulligatawny (the soup, that is, rather than a colleague).

It’s this kind of stuff the startup needs guidance on. Do I let my loss pass, grieve and move on, turn a blind eye to the precedent this creates? Pen an all staff email, intended to rebuild the circle of trust, that instead goes on to destroy it?

‘WAMPAMFANB?’ will be the manager’s best friend at times like this, and quite frankly its publication can’t come soon enough. Only last week a fellow startup (and one which has otherwise fared pretty well) revealed that one of its major management challenges to date had been an ill-fated attempt to reduce the number of snacks in its offices. Google, if you’re reading this, help is on the way.

My venture 101 turned one this week. Which begs the question: are we still a start-up at all?

Now that we have reached the safe haven of year one accounts, and hosted a suitably celebratory yet austerity-tinged birthday celebration, can the Start-Up Chronicles still safely be chronicled before someone alerts Trading Standards?

Oh yes. Year two or not, life aboard the submarine continues much the same.  We must wait for some more emphatic line in the sand than a mere birthday to shed our billing as industry debs.

That said, there seems to be no universally recognised staging post denoting the passage of a start-up to fully fledged corporate, no business barmitzvah.

And so I offer up this cut-out-and-keep ready-reckoner for those who work in, for or around a start-up…

Six surefire signs that you are a start-up:

a deep sense of mission;
a good chance the phone will be picked up by a founder;
palpable energy and ambition;
self-assembled desks from IKEA for all;
flat and collegiate company culture;
damp on the walls.

Six foolproof signs you are not:

a deep sense of mission statement;
a good chance the phone will not be picked up at all;
a distinct whiff of complacency and/or entitlement;
architect-inspired bespoke desking solutions;
partitions, perks and power plays;
health and safety notices on the walls.

Or, to put it more simply: if you’ve got a Billy bookcase in reception, you’re a start-up.

And so our first trading year draws to a close. Our calendar fiscal means we get to package our first 12 months up neatly, and to seize the moment to reflect and plan alike, just like we do beyond the office. There’s something clarifying for sure about the ‘reset’ that will come every year for us on 1/1.

But like any start-up, it’s difficult to be absolutely sure how we are doing. A start-up’s fortunes rise or fall according to its efforts, rather than the tide of the market. If it is trying to do something different (as most are), then the market’s metrics may not be right. It must assess its performance coolly and dispassionately, despite the regular switchback ride from ‘glass half full’ to ‘glass half empty’ that it necessarily experiences as a small business.

That said, ‘5 men and a multiplug’ (aka our Enid Blyton period) are now a staff of 25. The work we are doing seems to be working, which is what really oils the wheels (if you like flying barbecues, you’ll love this).

And our progress can be measured not just by the small profit turned this year but by our growing resemblance to a grown-up company thanks to small increments of professionalisation: a fully stocked stationery cupboard here, a shiny new appraisal system there.

Central heating, however, has proved more elusive these last few weeks, to the extent that any working radiator has instantly – and somewhat contrarily -become the new office water-cooler. Secret Santa’s gift for our receptionist? A hot water bottle, marked for office use only. And so our self-image as Spartans who toil against the odds remains intact. (We’ll turn it on next year.)

Perhaps the year end has come just in time: the last few weeks have not been kind to me socially. Congratulating an eccentrically moustachioed client on his plucky participation in the ‘Movember’ fundraiser, only to be met with a blank look. Sashaying into a new business meeting with a vintage briefcase containing our presentation materials, only to find I couldn’t open it. (My 45 minute struggle to spring the lock – both above and below client sightlines – was manful. That man? Basil Fawlty.)

Still, it’s nothing a little WD40 can’t solve, and you can’t say that about many management challenges.

A sofa booking system. Yes, that’s right. It’s an unusual growth indicator I’ll grant you, but this month’s little administrative initiative betrays a headcount that is beginning to test the limits of our otherwise agreeable starter home.

Stepping over people working in the company stairwell may warm the finance director’s heart and even speak to the vanity of the entrepreneur, but you won’t find it in many management textbooks – hotdesking or no hotdesking.

And so our reception sofas, previously tasked with providing no more than a warm leather welcome to visitors, must be forced into parallel, more formal, service. Soft space, with all its scope for an informal chat over a cuppa, for serendipitous conversation and careless talk, turns hard. It’s a slippery slope.

The flip side of pressure on our start-up quarters is this: we get to shop London’s weird and wonderful property market again. Or, rather, go window-shopping, not only quite literally but because – right now – our eyes are probably bigger than our bellies.

That said, there’s something undeniably thrilling about seeing an empty office that feels just right, contemplating our footprint (aka ‘where I intend to sit’), imagining the customer journey.

(A good property tour also obliges everyone to have a point of view, on the basis perhaps that nature abhors a vacuum. I found myself telling a colleague that ‘100 square feet per employee is a good rule of thumb’. This may or may not be true.)

The next office, of course, is always ‘the one’: a place that clients and talent will flock to, where the work will ‘write itself’, where gentrification will bring a first generation of independent coffee shops in your taste-making wake.

But the excitement of the property search also brings with it a little lining of terror. Like the dog in the car stickers of yore, a new office is for life and not just for Christmas. It must make commercial sense, however nice the view might be.

Our next office move, when and if it comes, will be a bet on success. But then what is a startup if it isn’t just that?

It’s funny how September still brings with it a whiff of ‘back to school’, even for those of us who left a long time ago. And I write as someone who left longer ago than most – ok, all – of my new colleagues.

But here at 101, we find ourselves telling each other what a busy autumn term we have ahead of us (perhaps it’s because it’s our first?).

It’s not quite ‘la rentree’, but the gang is reunited after variously dispersing for August. There are new shoes for some, a little facial hair even (on the boys, that is).

And although a sense of jeopardy always makes for a better story (and – like any start-up – we can conjure one of those up at the drop of a hat) there’s a base note of optimism beneath our more excitable top notes.

Our first TV work has aired, which is still a watershed of sorts for brandsmiths like us. Ninety seconds on X Factor doesn’t come cheap, so fingers crossed for bold advertiser French Connection. (Chino-clad readers: behold the power of the suit!)

Meanwhile, we’ve clocked good results for other clients, have work of quality and distinction in production for others and – perhaps most tellingly in terms of business maturity – our first office table tennis champion. An overseas winner, since you ask, a backhanded tribute – quite literally – to the founding spirit of the EU, even as the eurozone totters. Why doesn’t Britain produce winners any more, eh?

More generally, I guess, start-ups don’t start unless someone feels bullish and believes that new can beat old, or that fast can beat slow, and sometimes even vice versa. So when prospects say ‘no’ or, more often, ‘not yet’ – and, yes, there are some, the fools! – there’s an undercurrent of self-belief to fall back on, a safety net for the entrepreneur as trapeze artist.

Hold on, that’s it: the circus as management model! Lion-tamers and jugglers under the mercurial and watchful, occasionally crazed, eye of the ringmaster. And, er, clowns. Well, it’s as good a description of some places I’ve worked as any, present company naturally excepted. (Somewhere on the Eastern seaboard Tom Peters stirs momentarily in his sleep, before returning to a deep and even slumber; he will remember nothing in the morning.)

The gaps between meetings are getting smaller. The gaps between blog posts are getting bigger. Yep, we’re busy. And busy good so far, not busy bad, though that will surely come.

Our six-month anniversary came and went unobserved, ushered through without ceremony in the interests of that week’s BIG MEETING. (And we’re folk who like a little cake.)

And so we find ourselves suddenly surfacing in our third quarter, with half a dozen clients to delight, twenty mouths to feed and one holiday season to navigate. (Note to selves: find more Continental clients.)

In the absence of year-on-years and forms that must be filled in for owners, other metrics assume totemic significance. We have held a client dinner! Our website is up and running! The burglar-proof door plaque has finally arrived! Why – there’s even talk of a new joiners’ pack.

The real work, of course, is happening elsewhere. On building ideas that are fit for purpose for our clients and a culture fit for purpose for our talent. But these little baubles reassure nonetheless: they denote ‘proper-ness’ (to us, if no-one else), the thing new businesses crave most after the oxygen of income. Perhaps that’s why we found last week’s little jaunt from our West-End playground to the heart of the City quite so discombobulating.

It’s nice to be complimented, albeit a little over-enthusiastically, on one’s socks (unremarkable by Soho’s standards, the stuff of a rakish dandy in the Square Mile). Less so, though, to be asked, as a proud but casually-dressed entrepreneur negotiating The Valley of the Pinstriped: ‘Is that your van, mate?’

Another month, another corporate milestone notched up. Yes, we’ve had our first awayday.

Hosted at our office, true, so not technically ‘away’. And lasting a few hours only, so not strictly a day either. But a moment of reflection and respite from all the swashbuckling, nonetheless.

(On which note I feel obliged to recommend this forgotten moment of radio comedy genius, a management masterclass of sorts. Ignore the visuals and enjoy the dialogue).

That first awayday, I’m pleased to report, was no idle, lime cordial-tinged flipchart fest. Au contraire. Not when your corporate coach of choice is Richard Jolly (he of impeccable London Business School and consulting credentials/ repute).

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