Hey y’all- What if the most powerful startup playbook wasn’t in a VC’s blog, a Harvard case study, or an MBA curriculum…

…but buried deep in the story of human evolution?

Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee for Young People unpacks what makes us us ”Homo sapiens” and how we outpaced every other species. But look closer, and you’ll see it’s not just a book about biology.

It’s a mirror for founders, creators, and builders navigating chaos, invention, and scale.

This isn’t just anthropology.

This is your startup survival guide, decoded from millions of years of instinct, innovation, and insight.

What Startup Founders Can Learn from “The Third Chimpanzee for Young People”

What if the key to becoming a successful founder wasn’t hidden in business books or pitch decks, but deep in our evolutionary DNA?

In The Third Chimpanzee for Young People, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jared Diamond breaks down what makes us “Homo sapiens” so unique compared to our closest relatives, the other primates. But this isn’t just a biology lesson.

From how we communicate to how we cooperate, evolve, destroy, and create. This book is a goldmine of timeless insights that startup founders can (and should) borrow from.

Let’s decode 8 big lessons from our evolutionary roots that every founder should carry on their entrepreneurial journey.

1. Adaptability Beats Intelligence

In Evolution:
Humans thrived not because we were the strongest or smartest, but because we adapted fastest.

For Startups:
Markets change. Competitors pivot. Funding dries up.
Your survival as a founder won’t depend on your IQ or tech stack, it’ll depend on how quickly you can adapt.

Startups that treat adaptation as a habit “not a reaction” build resilience that outlasts chaos.

2. Communication Is the Real Superpower

In Evolution:
Language was our leap. It let us share stories, pass down knowledge, and organize in complex ways.

For Startups:
Your product, culture, pitch, and brand all depend on one skill: clear, empathetic communication.

Startup culture begins and scales through what you say, and how often you say it.

3. Creativity Is Our Default Setting

In Evolution:
Art, tools, myths, creativity set us apart from every other species.

For Startups:
Your edge isn’t just execution. It’s creativity in solving problems your competitors haven’t even spotted yet.

Especially in saturated markets, creativity wins attention, and loyalty.

4. Know Your Cognitive Biases

In Evolution:
We evolved with mental shortcuts to survive. But those same biases can mislead us in modern decision-making.

For Startups:
Founders fall prey to:

• Confirmation bias (believing only the data that fits your idea)

• Sunk cost fallacy (refusing to kill bad features)

• Overconfidence (trusting gut over feedback)

Being self-aware is your edge in fast, high-stakes decisions.

5. Growth Without Sustainability Kills

In Evolution:
Many human civilizations collapsed not from war, but from destroying their own ecosystems.

For Startups:
Rapid growth feels great… until it burns through cash, culture, or your customer’s trust.

Whether it’s through ethical pricing, healthy hiring, or customer ”first product decisions” build sustainability in from Day 1.

6. Cooperation Scales Everything

In Evolution:
No other species organizes in millions. We do, thanks to shared myths, trust, and cooperation.

For Startups:
Success isn’t about the genius solo founder. It’s about the team you build and how you align them.

Build processes for collective decision-making, shared goals, and culture that fuels execution.

7. Be Curious. Then Stay Curious

In Evolution:
Curiosity led to discovery. Exploration. Language. Fire. Everything.

For Startups:
Curiosity keeps you user-obsessed. It turns confusion into insight. It fuels experimentation.

Encourage your team to ask “why,” challenge defaults, and keep learning, even when things are working.

8. Learn From Patterns (and Mistakes)

In Evolution:
History repeated itself. Societies thrived or collapsed based on choices.

For Startups:
Your journey isn’t unique, it’s part of a pattern.

Smart founders don’t just move fast, they learn fast from others.

To Sum up

You might be building a startup, but what you’re really doing is applying millions of years of evolutionary wisdom to solve modern-day problems.

Everything that made us thrive as a species, adaptability, creativity, cooperation, curiosity, is what will help your startup survive and scale.

Jared Diamond may have written The Third Chimpanzee for Young People to explain our past.

But for founders?
It’s a handbook for designing a better future.