The last decade or so has been paradise for entrepreneurs mainly because as the world shifted more online and on mobile devises there was so much low hanging fruit up for grabs.
Times are now changing. This is not to say that there’s no longer opportunities. There will always be. But now they are shifting to much harder problems to solve.
Much like any new revolution. When industrialization happened, anyone with a conveyor belt a-la Henry Ford’s could churn half-decent products out the door that would sell. Not for very long but they’d sell.
Today to compete in manufacturing you need state of the art equipment, R&D and people. And you probably need to be in China to compete on price.
The same is happening in technology I believe. The name of the game for the past two decades was getting content and inventory online and creating tools to make it discoverable. Starting with the browser, then directories like Yahoo and Craigslist, then search engines like Google, then social networks like Facebook and now Instagram.continue reading »
One revolution that’s in the making today is that of the crowd. There’s lot of literature around it but it hasn’t yet transformed business in the way i think it inevitably will.
The staffing industry today is a whopping $450 Bn market. Of that only a mere $1Bn has been captured online. That’s 0.2% penetration.
If we compare that with commerce which leads services, there’s somewhere between 10-15% of the total value of commerce transacted online today and that’s projected to increase to over 50% in the next decade.
In relative terms the market of eServices is where eCommerce was in 1996!continue reading »
Possibly the worst piece of advice that keeps going round is that ‘ideas are cheap, its all about execution’. It’s not.
This is not to say that execution isn’t important. But great execution on a mediocre or bad idea will get you nowhere. A great idea that’s radically different will give you room for error and even if you don’t execute perfectly – which you won’t anyway – the business will succeed.
Quite a few entrepreneurs come to me to tell me their idea and get feedback. I always end up saying the same thing. Which is first to be brutally honest with themselves. 99% are not. They are wrapped up in their own chant. They drink their own coolaid.
Entrepreneurs in general have a knack for making their idea sound great. They can sugarcoat your own shit and sell it back to you without you realizing. They exude passion and get trapped in their own reality distortion field. And suddenly a crappy product that adds no value to the customer looks like ecstasy. And thats the problem. Most entrepreneurs when starting are not sober (metaphorically speaking). They’re on ecstasy.
So what makes a great idea?continue reading »
It’s been a good year
2014 has began well. Partly because I was skiing with my family as I usually do in the beautiful alps. The fresh air and the mountain always helps me self-reflect and think more. Without a shadow of doubt that one week skiing may be the most productive of my entire year. And whilst I always push myself to self-reflect that time of year – and this year in particular- is the deepest and most meaningful retrospection of all.
As I reflected on the past year I realized how much had actually happened. We started the year on steroids, the typical ‘go go’ top line investor fuelled growth mode. We operated on vanity metrics instead of sanity metrics. We were fat and over-bloated. We were management heavy and inefficient. We were shooting for the stars and developed tunnel vision.
And then something painful but retrospectively lucky happened. The investor appetite changed, some of the assumptions, promises and myths came out sour. Some hidden realities came out of the wash. The froth came off the cappuccino.
I’ve said time and time again that the true test in life is what one does when that happens. In our case I’m proud to say that we just picked ourselves up, implemented some drastic changes, got real and elevated sanity above vanity.
It wasn’t easy. We had to let go of team members, change plans and direction, scrap a lot of things that had emotional equity built in, and especially for the guy at the top who gets the shit from both ends – investors on one and team on other – I can tell you I had more than a few sleepless nights.
But we pulled through. We turned the business into cash-flow positive, we became leaner and meaner, the people staying over being part of the earlier hires who had more dedication and passion about who we are and what we stand for. Who share our sense of purpose.
We made drastic changes like moving from two split locations to one, which meant making our support team in London redundant. We dropped a few balls in the process with some metrics temporarily dipping but overall we came out a winner. Our costs overall halved and our revenue trebled in the year.
For this I am most grateful to the team that’s left over. They are warriors, with heart, passion and dedication. To reward them I doubled the stock pool and allocated a much bigger chunk of equity to the team that stayed for the fight. Some of the more senior management voluntarily took salary cuts in exchange for more stock.
The difference I’ve seen in mindset and perceptions is that from night and day. Its almost a different company now. Before I had employees. Now I have partners. Co-owners. And I push them to look at me more as a peer than a boss.
But good is the enemy of great !
Yet with all of that, I was still troubled at the end of the year. I had a niggling piece of the puzzle missing somewhere. I felt we did good but not great. continue reading »
