Category: entrepreneurship

middle trust

A prominent strategy for startups these last couple of years has been; cutting out the middleman. Traditionally, businesses got to their customers through intermediary parties such as agents, brokers, wholesalers, and distributors. Those businesses can now bypass said parties and sell directly to consumers. Transforming many business models drastically in the process.

The issue, however, is that the middlemen haven’t precisely been cut out. They’ve been replaced.

Arguably, AirBnB is one massive middleman, replacing thousands of in-between parties. Uber could be considered as one gigantic taxi dispatching central, replacing a multitude of others.

The way to succeed in a “cutting out the middlemen” strategy is twofold.

On the one hand, transactions have to be facilitated. That’s a given. Those transactions have to be fast, seamless, and convenient.

On the other hand, the perhaps less obvious aspect is becoming the most trustworthy party by far and large.

The middleman with the most trust is the one who will prevail.

commercial value

Something of value isn’t necessarily commercially viable, and vice versa.

If you follow a strict and specific diet that you find helpful, but nobody else does, commercial viability will be tough. To build a business around that diet, your assets could potentially include books, restaurants, food boxes, and so on. However, without the commercial viability, getting to the point where the assets become exploitable is zero to none.

Inversely, if you come up with a diet that everybody loves but is detrimental to the body, you may have nailed commercial viability, but the value you created is doubtful and arguably unethical.

Successful businesses make the creation of added, genuine value commercially viable.

earn less

Statistically, entrepreneurs work harder and earn less being self-employed than they would in a salaried job. Let that sink in.

It has to be the so-called problem that keeps you up at night. The problem which you know you can solve, creating added value in the process. If it’s anything but that, chances are there will be disappointment down the road.

Don’t do it for the money. Do it for the problem.

think like an owner

“If you think you can do better, why don’t you just do it yourself?” That’s what my superior told me years ago. So I did.

When I offered strategic technology consultancy services as a subcontractor, my superior once told me: “Why are you always so critical of the people and the businesses we assign you to?” What I think he should have added, for drama purposes, is: “You’re acting like you own the damn place!” Either way, my reply was: “That’s because I imagine I own the place.”

Only years later, I learned that this is one of Warren Buffett’s go-to pieces of advice: “think like an owner.”

If you want to help a business, really imagine what it’s like being the owner. Create an empathic understanding of what the owner might go through daily and take that as a starting point for optimization possibilities.

flowcus

Would you look at the time? Hours have passed, basic human needs were no longer an issue. Lost in the moment. The culmination of focus where everything else outside of the focus field seems to be less relevant.

Joseph Campbell was an American professor of literature. He once said: “What did you do as a child that created timelessness that made you forget time? There lies the myth to live by.”

I remember playing in a sandbox with matchbox cars. If no one were to call me for lunch, eating wouldn’t have even occurred to little me.

When you find those moments as an adult, in work, where irrefutable focus induces a flow-like behavior, you struck gold.

Flowcus is bliss.

brain cramp

When muscles contract involuntary, we call it a cramp. Given that cramps are usually caused by fatigue or strain, the involuntary reaction succeeds a, hopefully, voluntary action. A soccer player with cramps towards the end of a match isn’t unusual. Action, reaction.

What about the brain, though? If muscles cramp after submitting them to continued strain, maybe the brain could too?

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Those who demand lots of intensive intellectual capacity from their brains need decompression time to relax the particular muscles or brain.

After all, cramps cramp growth.

analyzing randomness

Even though people attribute lots of time and attention to specific events, almost religiously, predicting the outcome of said events requires no skills or unique insight.

Take a football match. Connaisseurs will have theories for days, predicting what will happen or rationalizing what has occurred.

Little do they know, it’s all random.

Two goals. That’s the number of goals with the highest probability to be scored throughout a match. Provided that the two teams are well matched. Other than that, predicting which team will win is mathematically impossible.

Maybe that’s what makes it interesting?

Events that can’t be expressed in a statistical model shouldn’t be analyzed statistically.

value plus value

Different cultures have slightly different takes on collaborating professionally. Some cultures are more welcoming and actively look for collaborations, whereas others tend to keep more to themselves.

One person alone can only do so much. Obviously. What’s true of people is true of businesses as well. One company, in and by itself, can only create limited value.

Think of your smartphone. A plethora of different parts are involved, sourced from various manufacturers. Some automobile makers purchase engines from competitors to put into their vehicles.

In his book “24 Assets“, Daniel Priestley writes: “There is no one thing that creates a valuable business. Value is created in the ecosystem of assets.”

To grow a business, collaboration has to take place.

if it isn’t broken, break it

There is a potential need to deconstruct “something” within your organization to comply with some standards. It could be a manual – or automatic procedure, soft- or hardware, privacy-sensitive data, the actual organization itself… The list goes on.

The “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” adage doesn’t always apply. Before extending certain certifications, the issuer wants the requester to deliberately break stuff or even fake malicious attacks.

If it isn’t broken yet, at least think about what it would require to break it, how it can be avoided, and how it can be resolved.

ontological humility

All the people I know, who truly excel at what they’re doing, are extremely humble. Additionally, great teachers, artists, entrepreneurs, developers… rarely seem to be satisfied with their work and have tons of pointers on how to improve.

As Fred Kofman wrote in the book Conscious business: “ontological humility is the acknowledgment that you do not have a special claim on reality or truth and, that others have equally valid perspectives deserving respect and consideration.”

Is humility a prerequisite for greatness?