Success is followed by the application of key fundamentals. For me, the fundamentals are hard work, vision, execution, focus, humility, commitment, team work, fun, and some luck. Hard working people get lucky. Success can mean different things to different people. However, the fundamentals of becoming successful are mostly the same.
Category: strategy
Why startups succeed?
Startups succeed for a variety of reasons. It could be the idea itself, the team, or the business model.
Bill Gross of Idealab shared The single biggest reason why start-ups succeed in a Ted talk. Besides the idea, team, business model or funding, there was an even more revealing reason why some startups take off based on Bill’s research and experience.
How do you teach culture?
Can you actually teach culture at your company? How about putting the company’s core values in places where everyone can see? And what exactly is culture?
These questions are not that easy to answer. But starting out with the right set of questions can help build a strong foundation for company culture: What culture do we want for our people? What should we strongly encourage and strongly discourage? Who can be our “culture ambassadors” within the company?
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 5 Rules for Success
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb7_E12FFLw&w=500&h=315]
Rising above the machines
There’s a lot of hype about AI and automation these days. The hype is real. It is reshaping companies, industries, communities, and even countries. Yes, countries as well. An opinion article on the Financial Times talks about China battles the US in the artificial intelligence arms race
Understanding what AI is and how automation will affect us will be the first step. Once we know the facts over the noise, it’s important to see the benefits of AI and automation in our work/company/industry. Getting educated about AI through courses like AI for Everyone will help us understand the basics of what AI can do and cannot do among other things. We also have to understand our human strengths and where machines won’t add value (at least in the near future) and leverage on them. Creativity, empathy, critical thinking, ethics, feelings (emotion) are areas where humans are far better at than machines. Let’s embrace the potential of this new technology, understand where it fits in our business or community or personal lives, and be prepared to stay ahead of the machines.
The omnipresent school
The class is in session. We’ve gone from cave settings to our current access from anywhere online class settings. Schools, colleges and universities meant physical structures with classrooms, playing areas, and facilities designed to engage the students. Now the places to get education are omnipresent. The web has literally transformed how we gain, use, and acquire new knowledge and skills.
Are you in class now? What are you learning? What’s next?
First mover disadvantage
We’ve heard of first mover advantage where the first company to venture into the market benefits from an early entry, building a brand, creating customer loyalty and so forth.
Is there also a first mover disadvantage? I believe so. Some markets are as adaptive as other markets and the factors could be culture, consumer lifestyle, lack of awareness, risk factor, technology adoption, access to technology among others. Take for example, a market like Nepal. Nepal leapfrogged from having most of the population with no phones to having smartphones to majority of the population. Yet many new tech innovations or products fail to get traction once they launch. Consumers are not as embracing as it might seem. A company will spend lots of money on marketing to sell its products/services. Yet most of the marketing budget will be spent on just creating awareness and their funds will run dry soon. The next company with similar product/service comes around having benefited from the first company’s marketing spend. Another company comes around who can leverage from the earlier two companies’ experience. We don’t know when the tipping point comes and the product/service catches fire but it can be said that first mover advantages don’t always benefit the initiator.
Yes, most times it’s best to be the first one to penetrate the market. Sometimes it’s best to wait a bit to put your best work forward.
Talent retention
Retaining the best talent in your company takes work-a lot of work. A competitive salary is just one part of the compensation package to keep the best talent within the company. Having a great company culture, a clear company mission and vision, challenging projects, mentorship culture, learning culture, making a social impact are some of the things that not only attract talent to the company but also keep the current employees engaged within.
What’s your talent retention strategy?
Why The New York Knicks Are So Expensive
This Business Insider video provides insights on why The New York Knicks Are So Expensive ( valued at $3.6 billion) given that they have had a very poor performance on the basketball court in many years. Plus, the video also talks about the different NBA markets, TV deals, and TV market sizes etc.
Entrepreneurial
The entrepreneurial journey is not everyone’s cup of tea. A few individuals love the adventure, risk and everything else that comes with entrepreneurship yet most love what they do and live happily also. Each is a life choice we make.
Yet entrepreneurial skills are something we can all strive to have. I believe you don’t have to be an entrepreneur only to develop entrepreneurial skills. Entrepreneurial skills include: a getting shit done attitude, being resourceful, leveraging your network, delivering on your responsibilities, being ethical, making an impact among many others. We can choose to be entrepreneurial everyday.
Continuing education
The graduate is an obsolete word now.
As technology changes industries, people and work, a degree will not be enough for you to sustain or stay competitive. With AI set to create jobs as well as replace mundane jobs, we need to stay on top of our game. This means colleges and universities cannot promise you anything once you leave campus. Many promises were made before but few degrees delivered. Now the work is in your hands. You have the tools to build the work you love doing everyday. Continuing education will keep you young, hungry, and mostly ahead.
The freshman is the present word now.
the culture setters
There is always a culture-company culture. It’s there from day 1. As entrepreneurs build their businesses, their personalities shape the culture of the company. Founder(s) are the initial catalysts of the company. As the company becomes bigger, the culture is carried on by the employees who joined the company in its early stages and the new ones follow suit.
Who are the culture setters in your company? Are they promoting the right culture within the company? What values do your employees embrace?
Startup Summit 2019
“Startup Summit aims to build startup ecosystem in Nepal where every stakeholders would play the expected role in incubating ideas and translate these ideas into venture. With multi stakeholders presence, this summit is supposed to be a milestone in Nepal’s Startup Ecosystem building process. ” Taken from Startup Summit 2019 website: http://startupsummit.businesstvnepal.com/
I’m excited to attend Startup Summit 2019.
Crowded market
This morning I read about a new food delivery startup in Kathmandu. I pondered do we really need another food delivery startup catering to the capital. There are already a few established names in the space and one who has been doing this since 2012.
Questions I had regarding the new food delivery startup:
-How big is your market size? How many people order food from office/home?
-How many other similar delivery startups are out there? What are their strengths/weaknesses?
-What is your Unique Selling Point (USP)?
-What’s your revenue model? Do the margins make sense?
-What is your burn rate? When is the expected plan to break-even/generate a profit?
Asking questions
Asking questions is an important skill that we all need. It takes confidence, preparation, and a curious mind to ask questions.
Reflecting on the college and work environments in Kathmandu that I have been part of, most individuals do not ask questions. It could be the same scenario for most of Nepal. I pondered what could be the reasons for this. Some reasons could be:
-An educational system that does not facilitate or encourage asking questions
-Workplaces that does not facilitate or encourage asking questions
-Nepalese culture of respect and obedience to teachers/elders/seniors
-Not enough time given or information provided beforehand to students/professionals to prepare questions
-Sometimes a “negative” perception of those who do ask a lot of questions
There could be other reasons as well. I would love to hear your thoughts on why students and professionals in Nepal do not ask a lot of questions. Do share.
Do it
If you want to start a business, do it.
If you want to travel the world, do it.
If you want to make a difference in the world, do it.
Most of us spent a lot of time just talking and planning and not enough time on actually doing it. Start today. Make it happen.
The math of effective communication
80/20
I strongly believe a good manager or a good leader is a great listener. Listening skills are one of the most important skills someone can have. A manager or leader has to make decisions and they need to hear as many perspectives/the most important ones to guide their decisions. If their listening skills are poor or their team perceives the manager/leader as having poor listening skills then it can have a tremendous impact on the success of the leader/manager, the project, the company etc.
Managers or leaders should spend more time listening than talking. I believe for effective communication one should spend 80% time on listening and 20% time on talking. When you create an environment that encourages people to speak up, you empower them and they are likely to rise up to the opportunity/challenge etc. By listening, you hear new ideas and perspectives. Some ideas might support your own and others might differ from yours. Once the team has provided you their input/insights/suggestions, then the manager/leader has to make decisions accordingly.
Technology and jobs
If a new technology comes and replaces people, do we consider that a great leap forward or backward? Do entrepreneurs have a moral obligation to build products and services that makes the revenue pie larger for the stakeholders or build them to keep all the pie to themselves? What role would the government play if the technology replaces people completely and lose their livelihood to sustain a decent living?
Technology that makes people productive, efficient, and our lives better are great. We deeply cherish the benefits that technology brings to our personal and/or professional lives. However, some products or services replace the human component and the economic pie only benefits the entrepreneur or a few middlemen. If a tour guide earned his/her living by providing a personalized experience to tour groups, would he/she be okay if a new app comes to replace this work completely? How can we create an environment where new products and services grow but also do not replace humans completely? Is the impact of innovation in economically tight societies creating more harm than boon?
Degrees and experiences
Nepal’s current job market is filled with college graduates. We have a lot of college graduates with degrees but with few or no work experience(s). The labor supply of college graduates is higher than the current demand.
We need college graduates with degrees and work experiences. Some solutions to this are encouraging students to start doing internships early, colleges playing a more active role in finding placements for students, and companies understanding the value of interns. At current, most students are doing an internship in their last semester and graduate with a work experience of less than 6 months. Students should actively search for opportunities and start doing internships as early in their college career as possible. This initiative will open more doors for students in the future. Colleges are currently doing just enough or a little bit to help their students get internships and jobs. They need to provide plenty of opportunities for their students to explore different career tracks, orient them about the job search process, and prepare them for job interviews. Companies should take interns and look to build their team if there is a right fit. It’s better to give the right intern a full time position than just hire someone out of the blue.