The Particle Physics of Venture Teams

This is mostly a true story

Once, several years ago, I was with a co-founder of a venture, and we were meeting a potential customer at a major organization. I was excited to talk with him about our product and was full of energy and enthusiasm.

But no matter what I said, he looked and acted like he was barely awake, almost frozen in space. He literally didn’t blink or turn his head when I showed images of our product. He didn’t move his head when I went to the whiteboard. When I asked him a question, he grunted or nodded rather than gave a complete sentence. When we left, he didn’t get up. He just sat there.

And then, as we went out the door, my co-founder said the words I never forgot.

He said that the customer was “a Buron.”

I asked what a Buron was. He said the term comes from an analogy to bureaucrats and particle physics. Burons have infinite mass and absorb all energy near them. They are inert. In meetings, they absorb time and resources and contribute nothing. Their favorite activity is doing nothing. They create a gravitational drag on the entire venture. They resist all change. When it comes to innovation, they’re a black hole—you send in ideas, and nothing comes back out.

I realized that my co-founder had discovered an entirely new science of venture teams, and I was excited to extend the concept.

Elementary particles are the fundamental building blocks of the universe. Each particle has unique properties and plays a specific role in the dynamics of the cosmos. Similarly, team members in a new venture can be compared to elementary particles, with each member contributing distinct skills, perspectives, and energy to the venture's success.

I continued to build the lexicon of the particle physics of venture team members.

The Enertron in your startup is the rare, high-energy team member with great vision and enthusiasm. When Enertrons enter a room, they radiate energy and reflect the energy of others. They seem capable of achieving the impossible, moving at breakneck speed, and delivering results that make you sit back and say, “OMG!” Their intensity is off the charts and can sometimes leave chaos in their wake. They’re brilliant but sometimes unpredictable, generating so much momentum that they can shake up the entire team dynamic. When they’re on your side, they’re a game-changer, but managing their energy is difficult to impossible.

The Gluon: The Gluon is an essential team member of the venture. Gluons help bind team members together, keeping the venture running smoothly and ensuring that all components work together efficiently and effectively.

The Creepon is a dangerous team member who siphons energy from others while trying to inflate their own importance. They constantly seek to expand their domain and credit, always at the expense of the team's cohesion. They often undermine their colleagues by creating chaos and confusion, ignoring management directions, and sowing doubt about others’ competence. They thrive on the resulting instability, presenting themselves as indispensable just as they quietly erode the foundation of the venture.

The Wimpon is the team member who is always swayed by whatever appears to be the popular opinion. They never take a stand on any subject.

The Procraston: The Procraston is a peculiar team member that warps time itself, causing delays and slowdowns wherever it goes. Meetings that should take 15 minutes stretch into an hour when the Procraston is involved. This team member specializes in deflecting tasks, endlessly postponing decisions, and generally creating a time-warped zone where nothing ever gets done. They’re the team member who promises to deliver tomorrow—always tomorrow—and before you know it, the deadlines have slipped into a parallel universe. If left unchecked, the Procrastatron can bring the whole venture to a grinding halt.

The Excuson: The Excuson is a master of avoiding accountability, always armed with a plausible reason for why they didn’t deliver. They can deflect blame with a precision that’s almost admirable. Whether blaming external circumstances, lack of resources, or even other team members, the Excuson never admits fault. They’re the first to point out problems and the last to offer solutions. They’re experts at spinning reality, leaving the rest of the team to pick up the slack while they escape unscathed, usually with a litany of excuses that sound just credible enough to pass.

The Spectatron: The Spectatron is a team member that’s present in every meeting, every discussion, and every email thread—but only in the most technical sense. They sit silently, nodding along and occasionally chiming in with noncommittal phrases like “sounds good” or “let me think about it.” But when it comes time to contribute, they disappear into the background like a neutrino passing through solid matter. They’re great at appearing engaged without ever actually engaging, and their lack of interaction means their potential energy never gets converted into real work. If the venture depended on them for momentum, it would be stuck in a perpetual state of inertia.

The Duplicitron: The Duplicitron is a team member who behaves differently depending on who’s observing it. In one-on-one meetings, they’re all smiles and support, agreeing with every idea and praising your insights. But in a larger group, they morph, suddenly adopting a different stance or outright contradicting what they previously supported. This two-faced behavior leaves everyone confused and frustrated, as they never quite know where the Duplicitron stands. They’re experts at playing both sides, positioning themselves to benefit no matter the outcome, while everyone else is left wondering who the real Duplicitron is—if they even exist in a stable form at all.

The Distracton: The Distracton is a walking, talking source of entropy, constantly introducing random disruptions into the team’s workflow. They have the ability to derail conversations with off-topic remarks, pointless questions, or irrelevant stories. Just when the team is hitting a stride, the Distracton will interrupt with something utterly unrelated, sending the meeting spiraling into chaos. They’re often unaware of the damage they cause, believing their tangents are adding value.

The Sleepon is that drowsy, sluggish team member in your startup—always running behind schedule, perpetually late to meetings, and giving off the vibe that they are one yawn away from drifting into another dimension. The Sleepon seems to move in slow motion, leaving everyone else to wonder if they’re operating in a different time dimension—or just dreaming of being somewhere else entirely.

The Narcitron is the most toxic and damaging team member. He thrives on attention and adulation, regardless of how it’s obtained. They have an insatiable need to be seen as the most brilliant, indispensable member of the team. They swoop in at the last minute to take credit for collective work, often leaving their teammates in the shadows. If a project succeeds, the Narcitron ensures that everyone believes it was solely due to their genius.

The Narcitron excels at bypassing standard communication channels. Instead of working through their direct managers, they make end-runs around them, going straight to the leaders with exaggerated tales of their own contributions. By the time the managers catch on, the Narcitron has already secured the praise or promotion they were after, leaving others blindsided.

Behind the scenes, the Narcitron engages in systematic sabotage. They spread rumors, subtly trash-talk colleagues, and plant seeds of doubt in leadership about the competence of others. They’re experts at manipulating perceptions, ensuring that their peers are seen as obstacles or incompetents while they appear as the only reliable force in the room.

A Narcitron in your venture can literally mean the end of your venture.

Writing this was great fun. Please feel free to add your fundamental particles to this new science!

Your Venture Coach,

Norman