Two old adages, “don’t waste time reinventing the wheel” and “profit from the mistakes of others, you don’t have time to make them all yourself” gave rise to a new series for 2017. Role Models is my effort to help you adhere to both, always remembering to tweak their ideas to fit yourMAP.
Yuchun Lee was a member of the famous MIT blackjack team (the basis for the movie 21) and a serial entrepreneur since childhood. Unica, his first “real” startup, which went public in 2005 and sold for around $500 million to IBM in 2010 . He is currently co-founder/CEO of sales training startup Allego.
Lee learned early on that telling, let alone ordering, people to do whatever didn’t work and radically changed his approach.
But then you very soon realize that human beings have free will and you’ve got to persuade them.
The first is the ability of the company to know what is true, what is not true, and what’s real and what’s not real. (…) The foundation is all about truth.
The second is how you behave as a team to solve problems. (…) Everybody’s trying to figure out how to look smart in front of the C.E.O. (…) it’s actually O.K. if you sit there. If you’ve got nothing to say, don’t say it.
The third is about mistakes. We tell people you’ve got to love your mistake. If you go through a whole day without making a mistake, you just wasted a whole day because you probably haven’t pushed yourself. (…) You need to see mistakes as opportunities to improve.
They are Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Fred Smith, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Howard Schultz, Mark Zukerberg, John Mackey, Herb Kelleher, Narayana Murthy, Sam Walton, Muhammad Yunus
These founders created and then nurtured healthy, sustainable organizations that now have a combined market value of more than $1.7 trillion. They directly employ more than 3 million people…
Each of their companies sits at the nucleus of a thriving ecosystem that has cultivated and nurtured dozens if not hundreds of other enterprises.
There is a short profile of each at the link; considering it’s a kind of holiday weekend that’s enough reading.
As I’m sure you’re aware I love stories. I believe that stories are the best way to excite and engage people no matter the relationship and definitely the best way to teach.
Today’s story is from Arthur Bart-Williams, a client whose startup involves a masterful story-telling platform.
Arthur’s story is proof that a great idea is worth pursuing—even when there is a six year lag between first thought and market testing.
From Arthur…
I founded Canogle in late 2010. The name—from the words, “can” and “ogle” and pronounced kan-og-uhl—means to look without restrictions; to be fully immersed in and a part of a particular world.
Canogle is a platform on which to tell a story.
People love stories; stories about the natural world and places they visit and stories about things, happenings and the brands they love.
They want curated stories, but they also want commentary from their peers and the Canogle platform provides both.
The idea first surfaced in 2004 when I was honeymooning on Maui and Jess, my wife, was using a paper map to navigate and to note interesting sites.
She said she was paying more attention to the map than to the things around her and I thought someone ought to come up with a way to know about sites as you pass them.
By the time we got home, I was excited enough to write the first version of a business plan and convince my brother to develop a prototype.
Then life happened. We had a daughter, I co-founded Combase, which was acquired by ViaNovus and then by Sword Group, fielded a few of life’s curve balls and had another daughter.
I was inspired again while watching a Silicon Valley technology show called “Press: Here” in mid-2010 and decided to find out if anybody cared about my idea.
I told one friend about the project, her eyes lit up and she introduced me to her friend who introduced me to the Executive Director of the Muir Heritage Land Trust, which became our first beta.
There may be dozens, even hundreds, of entrepreneurs working to start the next Facebook or Google, but, in fact, one part of the entrepreneurial world is shrinking, not expanding.
“VCs tend to invest in people who’ve had good exits, who have successfully had their company acquired. If you’ve had two good exits, you know the person isn’t a fluke.” –Ross Bott, CEO of Seven and former CEO of OneBox
“William Goldman famously responded to the question, How do you predict box-office success? with the answer ‘No one knows anything. That’s why Hollywood overpays for top-drawer stars.’ The exact same thing happens in the world of startups. If you’re a serial entrepreneur with at least one success behind you, you can almost always find a host of investors who will overpay for your next startup because nobody knows anything.” –Paul Kedrosky, Silicon Valley investor and commentator
While talent, intelligence and vision are useful, funding flows most often to the verbally skilled, as the profile on Nguyen shows.
And although there are many more entrepreneurs, the majority have far fewer ways to meet likely investors.
In order to be heard entrepreneurs need credibility, which is rarely measured in how many followers or friends they have.
Rather, as in ages past, it comes down to who you know—again, not followers, friends or even connections, but actually know.
Know as in ‘I will introduce you because I know you well enough to put my reputation on the line and tell X that you are worth his/her time.’
Incubators are hailed as a solution, but all incubators are not created equal—kind of like colleges, fraternities and sororities, some have more prestige and offer better alumni networks than others.
Again, who you know matters.
Social media is no panacea; they promote themselves as being able to evaluate “influence,” but is that influence real? Too often it’s the result of knowing how to play the I’ll-scratch-yours-if-you’ll-scratch-mine game.
Not that there’s much choice; it’s pretty much use the available tools, because it take too long to invent new ones and have them adopted.
The passage of HR2930 opens a new avenue in the form of crowd funding, which may lower the initial connecting/funding hurdle for new and unconnected entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs, you got to love ’em—at least most of the time.
Two great interviews today; just two because one if fairly long.
First is Dany Levy, founder and editorial director of DailyCandy in an interview conducted by Anthony (Tony) Tjan, CEO, Managing Partner and Founder of Cue Ball, a venture and early growth equity firm.
Daily Candy is “a daily email newsletter that provides readers with an essential nugget of hip, insider advice about “what to do today,” began in New York and soon spread to a dozen other U.S. cities and London.” Levy took in one majority investor 2003 and the company was recently acquired by Comcast for $125 million.
There is both a written interview and a video, but Harvard doesn’t provide embeddable code, so you’ll have to go there.
Next, Henry Blodget interviews 25-year-old Mark Zuckerberg who “started Facebook in his Harvard dorm room in 2004. Five years later, it has 300 million users and $500 million in revenue, and it’s worth something north of $6 billion.”
Many wonder what someone that age know about running a company that size, but Zuckerberg makes the case for not only hiring those smarter than you, something every has heard, but also listening to them.
Below is the full interview, the short version is here, if you prefer, but the full interview is well worth watching.
If there is one thing I have learned in more than two decades of working with entrepreneurs is that there is little that is “typical” about them, contrary to the media and even the scientific research.
How many times have you heard that entrepreneurs are risk takers? That may look true on the outside, but talk to them and you’ll find that most consider the risks minimal—based their own personal definition.
Let’s take a look at some proof of what I’m saying.
Most people think of entrepreneurs as loving a high profile as their success increases, but that isn’t always true. Take a look at this story about 24 year-old twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, who, as movie stars, are constantly in the news, but as entrepreneurs don’t even associate their names with their businesses.
Entrepreneurs know their culture is a reflection of them and their people. The smart ones are transparent when it comes to sharing that with potential clients; they let it all hang out as opposed to putting on a show. It’s good business.
Next is an entrepreneur’s take on MBA. After all, who but a serial entrepreneur would think to combine networking with a serious adrenalin rush and call it Maverick Business Adventures?
Before we close I have a homework assignment for you. Heather Clancy is a very smart lady, but I disagree with her take on great culture; come back Monday and find out why.
Dave Duffield is a very savvy guy. The serial entrepreneur with multiple successes under his belt is doing it again; Workday, his latest company is on a best places to work list.
You may remember Dave’s last company PeopleSoft (acquired by Oracle in a hostile takeover), which regularly made similar lists.
So what does Dave do that keeps his companies top rated? You can find the answers here,
“The Workday Experience is the combination of everything that’s unique about Workday: our culture, our core values, our company meetings, our Development “Show and Tell” happy hours, our soccer team, our recognition programs, but most importantly it’s our people. It’s everything that makes us different from your average employer, and everything that makes Workday a great place to spend a workday.”
I especially liked the list of cultural values to which they DON’T subscribe:
Bureaucracy
Top-down decision making
Corporate politics
Unnecessary organizational structure and hierarchy
“Kissing up” and “slapping down”
Boredom
Cutthroat, shark-like business dealings
Take a few minutes to read the Core Values and Culture info and see how many you already embrace at your company and how many you can add.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Yuchun Lee was a member of the famous MIT blackjack team (the basis for the movie 21) and a serial entrepreneur since childhood. Unica, his first “real” startup, which went public in 2005 and sold for around $500 million to IBM in 2010 . He is currently co-founder/CEO of sales training startup Allego.
A couple of weeks ago I linked to stories about great women entrepreneurs. Today we’ll look at the guys.
I founded 
There may be dozens, even hundreds, of entrepreneurs working to start the next Facebook or Google, but, in fact, one part of the entrepreneurial world is shrinking, not expanding.
Entrepreneurs, you got to love ’em—at least most of the time.
