Leadership - Amardeep

Build Your Dream Business Using Your Unfair Advantages

Amardeep — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 11:42:15 +0000

Hasan Kubba shares the MILES framework

Image courtesy of Hasan Kubba

Ideas don’t make successful startups. Execution does.

You might think your idea is special but most of the time a bigger fish can steal it with ease. Look at how quickly other social media platforms added rooms when Clubhouse became popular. They survived and Clubhouse will be forgotten.

Some people force me to sign an NDA before they tell me their startup idea. If they think I can steal their idea and execute it better than them, they should give up. They must have a clear response to “why you?” otherwise I don’t invest.

Hasan Kubba ran a profitable lifestyle business then turned to angel investing. Yet it became a chore because the average pitch was so low quality. He wanted to find a faster way to filter applicants to focus on those who had the greatest chances of succeeding. The MILES framework was born which grew into bestseller The Unfair Advantage.

The answer to “why you?” should be a cocktail of traits unique to you which aren’t easy to mimic. These are your unfair advantages. If you can articulate these well then you’ll have investors fighting to invest.

Follow along with the framework to see what you can leverage.

Based on this episode of Entrepreneur’s Handbook podcast with Hasan.

Money

The mafia runs Silicon Valley. Not the Silician-kind but the Paypal Mafia. This is a group of twenty-plus entrepreneurs who all made their money working for Paypal in the early days then went on to start their own businesses.

You might have heard of some of the companies they founded or led.

Tesla.
YouTube.
LinkedIn.

Their high earnings meant they had much higher runways than other entrepreneurs would. This meant they could take far more risks and outcompete by throwing money at problems.

It’s the same for any entrepreneur who has money from a previous career or from a rich family. Jeff Bezos accepted $300k from his parents. In a world that fetishizes his greatness, it’s important not to forget this.

The money advantages don’t need to be so extreme though. If you can live with your parents rent-free then you have an edge over your peers who have much higher expenses.

Hasan could work on his startup whilst not earning any money because he had the support of his family. If he was forced to pay for everything himself, his business may have never taken off and I would have never read his book.

If you have people around you who can support you financially, make sure you are grateful!

Intelligence & Insights

Raw intelligence is a blessing but it can also be a curse.

Misunderstood geniuses appear throughout history. Christopher Langan has an IQ above 200 but spent most of his adult life working as a bouncer. He dropped out of university because he thought he knew better than his professors. He’s smarter than every founder in silicon valley but lacked the social skills to use his ability in a meaningful way.

For intelligence to be an effective unfair advantage, it must be targeted. This is where insight comes into play. Your background is unique and means you can see solutions where other people don’t even realize there’s a problem. Deep knowledge of one area combined with a curiosity for another can lead to interesting combinations.

A great example of this is Tristan Walker who founded Walker & Company. He graduated from Stanford Business School and was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Andreessen Horowitz. He had always struggled with shaving irritation his entire life and realized it was a common problem amongst black men. It was an ignored market because of the lack of diversity in board rooms.

Tristan combined his unfair advantages to meet the need and get VCs on board.

Location & Luck

Bill Gates is smart but luck played a huge part in his success.

He built world-leading expertise because he was one of the only people to have access to top-of-the-line computers while still in high school. His competitors had to wait until they went to an elite university before they could learn. Bill was the perfect age to take a big risk on PCs when the industry had high barriers to entry.

My first language is English and I grew up in London. I’m not Bill Gates but a large part of what I’ve achieved today is due to these two factors. Had I been born in a small village in Panjab like my father, I doubt you’d be reading this.

London is a magnet for highly driven people so just by living here, I’m more likely to meet people who could have a big impact on my career. They can then open the doors for me without me needing to send a thousand cold emails from Siberia.

It’s possible to increase your chances of being lucky though. Putting your work out in public makes it more likely someone will notice you. You can go to networking events and keep experimenting with ideas.

Nothing in life is guaranteed but you have to play the game to win.

Education & Expertise

It’s become popular to tell aspiring entrepreneurs they should skip university if they want to build a business. This is terrible advice and ignores all the unfair advantages an education gives you. It’s not a coincidence so many famous entrepreneurs went to Stanford or Harvard.

Education goes beyond just what is taught in lectures even though this is useful. As someone with an economics degree, it pains me how poorly many people understand how money works as they scream about cryptocurrency from the top of their lungs. University doesn’t teach you everything but it can help you make more informed decisions.

The signal aspect is another major effect as of right or wrong, simply having Stanford in your bio will make investors take you more seriously. It’s a signal you’re intelligent and hardworking even if you’re not.

The biggest advantage comes from networking as many top programs will give you access to high-quality contacts. It increases the chances you’ll have a personal link to someone with enough power to get your startup off the ground.

If your university days are behind you, it’s doesn’t mean you can’t use this unfair advantage though it may be more difficult. Hasan learned how to build a passive income machine from an online course. The key is to learn a skill that others need help with.

Social Status

Two years ago, WeWork was worth $50 billion despite being a low-profit margin office space business. On paper, it doesn’t make any sense but the secret sauce was Adam Neumann. The founder had electric charisma and made friends in high places with ease.

Investors can use a charisma proxy where they assume someone who is well-spoken is also competent in other areas even if there’s no evidence.

Likeability is an underrated key to success for many founders. They get funded when others wouldn’t. They get free advice when others get ignored. They are forgiven for mistakes when others aren’t.

Sometimes you don’t even need to be likable yourself as association with a credible person can be enough. With my podcast, I’m aware a potential guest may not come on for me but they see their friend has already come on. This means each connection I make can exponentially increase my social status.

If you aren’t the type of person to command an entire room’s potential, focus on one new relationship. Prove yourself trustworthy to this one person and you’ll by proxy gain a bit of trust with another hundred people.

Who you know matters but you can always expand your network in an authentic way.

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How Eric Barone Built A $30 Million Business By Himself From His Apartment

Amardeep — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 11:57:07 +0000

Why you shouldn’t follow his lead

Created by the Author

It annoys me when most people call themselves self-made.

They use it because their parents weren’t rich but they forget about all their employees. Most businesses aren’t built by one visionary without the help of an army of helpers. Few people actually do it all by themselves even if they claim to.

Eric Barone is one of these rare creatures.

Using wages as a part-time theatre usher as funding, he created the massively popular Stardew Valley video game. All by himself. For context, the development of Super Mario Odyessy needed 68 different specialized roles. Eric was the producer, storyteller, developer, audio director, and artist all rolled into one.

It took him over four years but the game was an instant smash hit. Professional game reviewers loved it too; IGN rated it 95/100. It’s sold at least 15 million copies and made at least $34 million for Eric; the revenue is likely to be much higher today as that number comes from 2017.

You might be tempted to follow in his footsteps but when you read on, you’ll see how his obsession almost broke him.

It was just meant to be practice

“I just had my intuition as to what was the next important thing I should work on.” — Eric Barone

Hindsight bias is strong in many entrepreneurs. They’ll preach about how they always had a higher mission when they started their business but it’s easy to say when they’ve already made it.

Eric is more humble. He was a computer science major who no one would hire. He only started working on the game as a way to keep his coding skills sharp so he could impress potential employers. The burning passion to make the game perfect came later on. Maybe if Apple had given him a job, millions of people would never have had the pleasure of playing Stardew Valley.

You don’t need to begin with the end in mind. It’s ok to start something and work out along the way whether or not you’re passionate about it. We’re all muddling our way through life. You can abandon a project if doesn’t light a fire in your belly but you could build something great if it does. You’ll never know unless you try.

Why not me?

The mindset shift from practice to tenacity had one basic pillar.

Whenever he came across a task he didn’t know how to do, he asked himself, “why not me?” If there were other people out there who could do it, why couldn’t he learn how to do it? Pixel art was something he remembers being difficult but he sunk hundreds of hours into getting better. His self-belief meant Stardew Valley was high quality in every measure.

Yet the me-against-the-world mentality also stopped him from ever asking for help. Most of us turn to Google with our problems and we will often find the answer yet sometimes no one has posted about the unique challenge you face. When I worked in tech this is when I would ask a colleague or ask for advice in a forum. I saw no point in re-inventing the wheel as the end product would be the same.

In some ways, Eric succeeded because he took this outlook and in other ways, it was despite it.

The irony

For those of you who have never played Stardew Valley, it’s a refreshingly simple game.

The main character in Stardew Valley quits his job at an inflexible corporation because his grandpa leaves him a plot of land in the middle of nowhere. The character chooses to restart his life out in nature surrounded by beauty. The gameplay is based around farming and interacting with characters who have a human-like depth to them.

This was the complete opposite to Eric’s life. He worked 80 hour weeks and barely left the house. He was his own inflexible boss but there was no plot of land to escape to. His girlfriend remembers what he was like:

“He would be working all day till 11:30 P.M. and I would be like, ‘Hey, you have to get off the computer. You have to do something with me. We have to eat dinner. We have to watch an episode of Star Trek.’ I needed more interaction with him.”

Eric’s obsessive attention to detail made the game as great as it is but the costs to his health and his relationships were great. If I told you that all you needed to do was work 80 hour weeks on top of a part-time job and stay inside all day to make $30 million, would you take it?

He admits “it was definitely a struggle to keep my sanity.”

Burnout strikes

Even after the game was released in 2016, Eric continued being a one-man team for a while. He’d have to be superhuman to provide support to millions of players and eventually all his hard work caught up with him.

In August 2017, he took an overdue break and went on a road trip across America with his girlfriend and housemates. Eric experienced the outside world again with the freedom of one of his virtual characters. They stopped off in California where he allowed himself to relax on the beach like when he was a kid. He later hired someone to help him manage Stardew Valley.

He’s now working on a new project called Haunted Chocolatier by himself again. Yet the unhealthy obsession no longer seems to be there. He’s learned from Stardew Valley and while he wants his new game to be even better, he’s not destroying himself to do it.

I believe he can be proud of is how many people’s lives he has impacted with his game. During the pandemic, the importance of gaming to people’s mental health came into focus. I know many people who used gaming as a way to cope whether it be complex games such as Eric’s Stardew Valley or simple games such as free online solitaire.

It might not have been his intention but there are so many examples of people who say it has made their lives better. Maybe making games despite the money isn’t the best thing for your mental health but playing them could be.

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How Roadmap Marketing Helped Hopin Grow to Almost $8 Billion in Two Years

Amardeep — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 12:13:11 +0000

Dave Schools, a member of the founding team, breaks it down

Image courtesy of Dave Schools

Can you name the fastest-growing European startup ever?

The answer is Hopin.

It started as a virtual event experience company back in 2019 before remote work was a buzzword. When Dave Schools joined as the Head of Marketing when the company had no employees and zero revenue. He played a key part in the early days as Hopin challenged the giants of the online video world.

He remembers walking down a TechCrunch event with his laptop in hand and winning a deal with Dell. This was all pre-pandemic. Once the world turned upside down, a rocket was lit under Hopin and it reached unicorn status rapidly.

Today it’s worth nearly eight billion dollars. They’ve staked their place in the tech stack of giant enterprises and indy organizations alike. Dave believes what he calls “roadmap marketing” was a major reason behind this rapid growth combined with the fantastic people he worked with. Here we break it down so other entrepreneurs can use it for themselves.

This article is based on an episode of Entrepreneur’s Handbook with Dave Schools.

“Build features for logos”

How did Hopin as such a new company earn such huge names as clients to put on their website?

It’s no mistake or accident. It was an intentional strategy.

While the early product was innovative, it often lacked features large enterprises considered must-haves for them to become customers. Some startup founders would accept defeat and try someone else.

Hopin’s founder, Johnny Bourfhat, was different. Instead of telling a potential client that they didn’t have a feature, he’d say they didn’t have it yet. He would ask when their event was then take a moment to think. Inside his head, he was doing the calculations to figure out the logistics. Johnny would then tell the company the feature would be ready by then with confidence.

If he needed to hire more people or switch focus from other projects to deliver then he would. The priority for development was set by the needs of potential clients, not plucked out of thin air. The feedback from sales calls fed directly into the development pipeline.

They built the features the Wall Street Journal needed.
They built the features TechCrunch Disrupt needed.
They built the features The Atlantic needed.

Hopin gained a reputation for delivering on its promises and this encouraged even more companies to come on board.

How to do this for yourself

This is not a license to guarantee the stars to potential clients. We don’t want a repeat of the tragic tale of Theranos.

What Hopin did was ethical because Johnny made guarantees which he truly believed in. It does help that Johnny was an incredible developer so had a strong grasp of what was possible and what wasn’t. If you don’t have the technical knowledge yourself, make sure you have someone on the call who can speak up on how plausible it is for a new feature to be ready in time.

If you aren’t so blessed to have a team that can meet all the demands from potential customers then you need to prioritize. You rank your opportunities by what would be the most impressive logo to show other companies and focus on them. It might mean you need to turn away some customers in the short run but you should keep lines of communication open.

Once you have existing customers then you order them by the highest paying first. You’ve got a duty to take care of them because they are paying your bills!

If you have happy customers then you can leverage partner marketing. It’s one thing having a logo on your website but having a video testimonial from someone senior shows a deeper level of trust. It snowballs from there!

Repeat, repeat, repeat

Dave is confident this method works because he’s using it for the third time for his stealth new product launch within Hopin. He recognized the massive success it led to for Hopin’s core product and repeated it for the Streamyard Business launch. He couldn’t reveal much about the new venture but should be keeping your eyes peeled based on his history.

What’s great about Dave’s role within Hopin now is he is able to lead startups within a startup. It gives the new launches the best of both worlds as they have the financial support but none of the rigidity that usually comes with it in other large tech companies.

Roadmap marketing might seem like a strategy only for scrappy startups but it can be applied by companies of all sizes if they have the ambition.

When you have your first successful product launch, learn from Dave. Keep those who love the early stages of a startup able to focus on emerging products and you’ll keep launching killer products. Good luck.

https://youtu.be/tOrZ2AYbDdI

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The 20 Top-Rated Business Books of 2021

Amardeep — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 23:02:27 +0000

A reading list for all entrepreneurs

Created by the Author

2021 hasn’t been the year we all hoped for but I’m hopeful 2022 will be brighter.

You might have struggled to find the time to keep up to date with the best business books this year so I’ve compiled this list for you. The current times are reflected in what people were reading with several corporate catastrophe books as well as books covering equality and the climate.

Ranking books is always highly subjective and I use a simple formula to order this list. Like movies, the first people to review are super fans or know the author personally. I account for that by giving extra weight to the number of reviews then I normalize the raw figures to give a score out of 100.

This isn’t a list of my favorite books but based on the views of the highly engaged readers of Goodreads.com.

AP: Amardeep Parmar score (books are ranked from lowest to highest score)
GR: Goodreads.com rating and number of ratings
AZ: Amazon.com rating and number of ratings

(Please note that this story contains affiliate links but you can choose to simply google the titles instead should you wish to purchase elsewhere. You can find the 2020 list here.)

#20 Huddle: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power by Brooke Baldwin

AP: 72/ GR: 4.2 from 260/ AZ:4.8 from 236

Brooke is a CNN journalist and explores the importance of women supporting each other. Now I’m not a woman but her advice has been well-received by many. It offers practical tips for women to work together to achieve their collective goals within an organization.

#19 Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone by Sarah Jaffe

AP: 74/ GR: 4 from 1387/ AZ: 4.4 from 130

If you’re looking for an upbeat book, keep scrolling. Sarah unleashes a strong critique of the way we look at work by exploring how we got to where we are. The central message is stop seeking to love what you do for money because it’s all part of the system. Whether you find that depressing or empowering is down to you!

#18 Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam by Vivek Ramaswamy

AP: 74/ GR: 4.17 from 538/ AZ: 4.8 from 1312

Potentially the most controversial book on this list though it’s not as aggressive as the title might suggest. Vivek argues companies across America are only taking stands on certain topics as a form of marketing rather than believing in what they say. If you think an advert is just to tick a box, you might be right.

#17 A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload by Cal Newport

AP: 75/ GR: 3.95 from 2681/ AZ: 4.4 from 956

I confess I check my emails obsessively even though I know I shouldn’t. Emails were designed to be asynchronous but too many people expect instant replies. Cal offers a guide to change this damaging culture in your work and business.

#16 The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed by Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba

AP: 76/ GR: 4.12 from 1016/ AZ:4.4 from 336

This is the only book on this list where I have personally met one of the authors! So much business advice relies on a mantra of hard work and sacrifice but Hasan and Ali reveal unfair advantages is the secret. We all have something we can bring to a business that our competitors can’t. They provide a roadmap for exploiting your unfair advantages.

#15 The Key Man: The True Story of How the Global Elite Was Duped by a Capitalist Fairy Tale by Simon Clark and Will Louch

AP: 76/ GR: 4.23 from 549/ AZ: 4.4 from 243

An insane story. Simon Clark and Will Louch expose Arif Navqi who cheated investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars. Both Obama and Bill Gates were amongst his victims. Compared to other tales of massively fraudulently businessmen, Arif’s is relatively unknown but no less riveting.

#14 The Conversation: How Seeking and Speaking the Truth about Racism Can Radically Transform Individuals and Organizations by Robert Livingston

AP: 76/ GR: 4.42 from 206/ AZ: 4.8 from 109

The protests of the last few years have increased the importance of workplace equality and Robert Livingston’s book is a useful aid. He aims to open up conversations rather than shut them down. It’s a thoughtful read which is heartfelt rather than preachy.

#13 Ask Iwata: Words of Wisdom from Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s Legendary CEO by Satoru Iwata, Hobonichi, Sam Bett

AP: 77/ GR: 4.19 from 1071/ AZ: 4.8 from 1231

A short book with a collection of insights about the revolutionary leader who drove Nintendo between 2002 and 2015. He’s the man who chose to not compete with Sony and Microsoft on hardware and focus on creating games people loved instead. So many joyous moments in living rooms around the world have occurred because of his vision.

#12 An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang

AP: 79/ GR: 4.08 from 2946/ AZ: 4.4 from 701

You have to wonder if Facebook renamed itself to Meta just so history doesn’t immediately associate them to the stings like this. It won’t work. If you want to be up to date on how much the company has abused its power, read this.

#11 Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire by Brad Stone

AP: 80/ GR: 4.15 from 2676/ AZ: 4.5 from 1008

Brad’s earlier book on Amazon, “The Everything Store”, was a huge bestseller in 2013. A lot has happened in the last eight years and that’s the subject of this book. It covers all the major events in detail with an often positive lens but Brad doesn’t avoid the difficult questions.

#10 My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future by Indra Nooyi

AP: 81/ GR: 4.4 from 808/ AZ: 4.7 from 288

As someone of Indian heritage, Indra’s ascent to Pepsi CEO was a landmark for many in my community, especially for women. Her story is far more relatable than many other founders because she doesn’t try to create a sense of aura around herself. It’s a great read for anyone who wants to understand the decision-making process for someone at the top of a huge global company.

#9 Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by Colin Bryar, Bill Carr

AP: 82/ GR: 4.27 from 2028/ AZ: 4.6 from 1227

What’s great is Colin Bryar and Bill Carr both have over 20 years of Amazon experience. They break down the culture and the principles which have led to the company’s huge success. It’s an overwhelmingly positive book because of the history of the authors but one which has many practical lessons for entrepreneurs.

#8 The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell

AP: 82/ GR: 4.34 from 1558/ AZ: 4.7 from 434

WeWork tried to be a sexy company but in reality, they were a low-margin office rental company. The hype around them was overblown and the fall was fast. $47 billion in 2019 to under $3 billion in 2021. Who can keep their eyes off a car wreck? It might help you to not fall for a similar delusional founder’s charisma in the future.

#7 The World For Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources by Javier Blas, Jack Farchy

AP: 82/ GR: 4.42 from 995/ AZ: 4.7 from 569

Commodities are big business but the average person doesn’t understand how the physical trade works. The people who control the trade of chemicals like cobalt, bauxite, and alumina have far more power than could ever dream of. They can choose to support or topple national governments.

#6 This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth

AP: 85/ GR: 4.38 from 2362/ AZ: 4.6 from 1647

The dark side of the explosion of the importance of technology. Businesses of any scale are going to need to start paying greater attention to security as the wars of the future will be held online. A reminder to anyone in the SaaS world to make sure their code has no loopholes even in MVP.

#5 Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

AP: 86/ GR: 4.36 from 3497/ AZ: 4.6 from 671

Oliver aims this book at people obsessed with productivity. He reminds them the average human only has 4,000 weeks. Do you want to spend it crossing off meaningless tasks from your to-do list? For entrepreneurs, it makes you think about your mission rather than just short-term thinking. I love Oliver’s style which is full of nuance.

#4 Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX by Eric Berger

AP: 89/ GR: 4.52 from 2694/ AZ: 4.8 from 2057

Everybody loves writing about Elon Musk but few had the access Eric did. He is the senior space editor at Ars Technica and reported on SpaceX for over a decade. In Liftoff, he summarises everything including all of his direct interviews with Elon himself. If the innovation behind the space race fascinates you, you’ll love this.

#3 How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates

AP: 91/ GR: 4.18 from 26881/ AZ: 4.5 from 7714

If you’re surprised by a book about climate being so high up then you haven’t been paying attention. Rather than just telling everyone to consume less, he accepts the developing world needs the energy to lift people out of poverty. He wants the businesses of the world to focus on clean energy instead.

#2 Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam M. Grant

AP: 94/ GR: 4.25 from 33231/ AZ: 4.6 from 6991

Adam Grant appears to have the Midas touch with yet another bestseller. His core argument here is you should always challenge why you think the way you do. He uses famous examples from history to illustrate how people didn’t have the right answer the first time around but adapted to achieve success.

#1 Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

AP: 100/ GR: 4.59 from 18563/ AZ: 4.7 from 3089

It seems this year, people love reading about companies behaving badly! Few companies in recent memory have created more tragedy than Purdue Pharma. They intentionally triggered an opioid epidemic to increase their profits. The story is riveting and it’s a handbook of what you shouldn’t do in your own business.

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How Falguni Nayar Became India’s Richest Self-Made Female Billionaire

Amardeep — Sun, 14 Nov 2021 23:52:05 +0000

A modern-day heroine

Photo of Falguni Nayar from Vogue

Falguni called her company “Nykaa” after the Sanskrit word for heroine. With her massive success, she is undoubtedly a Nykaa herself.

She breaks every stereotype about unicorn tech founders. She’s not white. She’s not a man. She’s not a college dropout in her 20s. Yet she is a business powerhouse who now has a net worth of over $7 billion.

Falguni didn’t start Nykaa until she was 50 and she had no previous experience in retail or e-commerce. Her attempt to create India’s dominant beauty and wellness company could seem like a massive risk. She admits she “had few believers and many naysayers”.

She proved them all wrong.

She gave Indians access to global brands from an app and the demand was unstoppable. Nykaa now has 80 stores in 40 Indian cities and the parent company had $330 million in revenue last financial year.

The crazy thing is the Indian market isn’t even close to fulfilling its potential yet.

“For everyone across India who has ever had a dream, especially women, I hope the Nykaa journey — an Indian-born, owned and managed dream come true — can inspire each of you to be the Nykaa of your lives.” — Falguni Nayar

Her old day job got her here

So many internet gurus scream at you to quit your job today and become your own boss. As if it were so easy. Falguni proves there is another way and what you do in your day job can fuel your business success later.

If you look at her resume, you’ll see she was always a high achiever. She has an MBA and worked at India’s top investment bank for 18 years. Especially as a woman, you don’t become the Head of Institutional Equities unless you are seriously good at what you do. Everyone around her respected her competence.

Her banking knowledge is why her net worth is so enormous and how she kept control of 53.3% of her company’s stock. For comparison, Twitter’s founders only had 17% when they went to IPO. Falguni’s smart decision was avoiding venture capital funding and instead relying on high net worth individuals.

“Being a banker, I knew VC funds come as conditional funding; it’s not really equity. If you don’t do well, it’s debt. I wanted pure equity. We have raised Rs 185 crore over three rounds with 20 unique investors. We’ll list the company.” — Falguni Nayar

Many founders find their vision distorted by the influence of other investors and Falguni’s deep experience in the sector meant she could protect herself.

My background in tech and business has helped me succeed in online business in a way most other people simply couldn’t compete with. I see too many people ignore the competitive advantages they gained from past life experiences when starting a new venture. What is your day job? What skills do you have that others in your target market don’t?

“I hope more women like me dare to dream for themselves.”

When Whitney Wolfe-Herd took Bumble public at the start of 2020, it was a significant milestone for women in tech. I would call Falguni’s story even more remarkable because of the country she grew up in.

India ranks 140th out of 153 countries in The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021. The country’s female labor force participation rate went down from 26% in 2005 to 20.5% in 2019. There is much change to be made to empower women and lift the economy as per Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen’s groundbreaking thesis.

I know many brilliant Indian women who feel stifled by cultural expectations. To do their own thing, they’ve had to fight against the wishes of their parents. Falguni was lucky in this regard as her father treated her the same as her brother. He taught her the basics of business management and inspired her to take the route she did.

To Indian fathers out there, don’t limit the potential of your daughters. They can take on the world.

“I don’t think men are waiting to not allow women to do what they want. I think women have to want it for themselves. And if they want it for themselves, they will have it.” — Falguni Nayar

Get on the rollercoaster early

The average spending power of an Indian is just over 10% of an American. This inequality can’t survive in the long term. Indian living standards and their influence on global demand will continue to rise. The problem is no one knows how fast this will happen.

Falguni had the foresight so many others lacked. She knew India would have a huge online retail market and realized the competition was weak. This allowed her to get in early and capture a significant market share of a fast-growing segment. It would be much harder for a copycat business to launch today because Nykaa has such a strong reputation.

Just as how Amazon started in the book market then expanded, Nykaa moved into the fashion business and created private labels. It’s smart business sense to dominate a small sector first where the competition is weak to gain the strength to take on larger segments. Now 20% of Nykaa sales are in fashion.

Many entrepreneurs start from their idea rather than looking at what the world will need in the future. Competition is vicious in markets where people have a short-term outlook. It’s much calmer where you need a longer-term perspective. If you can take this path and focus on upskilling in the meantime, you may have a better chance.

What’s great about Falguni’s story is even her intense analytical brain, she loves what she is doing. I wish we could all be so lucky.

“The size of the prize doesn’t really matter. Being rewarded for doing what I love doing is the key. Share prices are the bonus.”

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How Jeff Lawson Built a $64 Billion Company By Focusing On Developers

Amardeep — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 08:00:02 +0000

Twilio is quietly changing the internet

Edited by the author — original image from Flickr

Software companies often forget about the humble developer. I know this too well as a former tech consultant.

The big companies focus on how to impress execs with flashy features but the product is a shambles under the covers. It’s left to developers to deal with all the bugs and somehow still deliver the requirements within the deadline. You’d be surprised how many famous products have defects that never get fixed because developers aren’t prioritized.

Jeff Lawson’s mindset is different. He’s an angel for the tech startup world. His company Twilio has gone from 0 to $64 billion in 13 years by concentrating on the problems developers face.

Do you know when you get an SMS update about your order? The developers probably used Twilio to set up the connection.

Jeff is a guy doing what he loves and changing the way businesses contact their customers. Here’s his story.

He’s a strong independent developer

At his core, Jeff is a problem solver. As a five-year-old, he would build robots out of cardboard boxes with his dad but was frustrated that they didn’t move. This led him to code at a young age because he wanted to make things work.

Jeff worked at many great startups and learned how crucial communication was to success. Yet the options to connect with users seemed primitive and it bothered him. He was told he needed to talk to communications giants like Cisco for a solution.

But these companies had no idea how to do what he wanted to achieve. They talked about installing underground wiring and three-year projects which didn’t make any sense for a fast-changing startup.

No one else seemed to be willing to take on the issue he kept facing so he decided to do it himself. The communications world was too hardware-based and slow but he came from the speedy software world.

His idea created a new business category.

“I started Twilio to solve a relatively simple problem: How do we bring communications into the realm of software and enable every software developer in the world to build out their ideas quickly and easily? That’s where we started.”

Engage in your own community

The problem with many entrepreneurs who create products to meet their own needs is they fail to check if anyone else has the same problem.

Jeff didn’t fall to this self-centered attitude.

“I know a customer segment that has a problem and I’m going to go solve it.”

He was already an active member of the software developer community so had rich connections with his potential customers. He didn’t give people a sales pitch but fed them enough to trigger their curiosity. Everyone Jeff told about it could think of ways it would make their job easier.

35% of startups fail because there is no market need for the product. If you have the contacts in an industry you care about, use them! It’s far better to find out no one cares early on than wait until you’ve sunk time and effort into building a fancy prototype.

This doesn’t apply only to tech startups. Jesse Enkamp is a world-famous karate instructor who was frustrated at how hard it was to maintain the uniforms. He asked around and everyone said they had faced the same difficulty so he built his own brand. It’s grown exponentially!

Empowering the disempowered

Venture capitalists weren’t hot on Jeff’s idea. They wanted him to make an app rather than a platform because it’s what managers look for. They thought no one pays attention to what developers want anyway.

Jeff faced a difficult choice whether to build what he knew the community needed or to take the simpler path to funding. He did what he believed was right and the VCs came running to him once he’d proved them wrong.

Jeff promotes the idea of following your customers rather than your investors. Many companies get VC backing but go nowhere so it’s not always best to trust them.

Twilio’s slogan is “Ask your developer”. It works because developers will always seek out the tools that help them do their job to the best of their ability. They don’t need to have adverts shoved in their face but they do need their bosses to listen to them.

Twilio has 10 million developers in their ecosystem now. They are being listened to. By valuing the opinions of the people who will use their software, they have created a strong sense of goodwill.

The dirty secret

“The dirty secret of every startup ever is that when you look at companies with these big, world-changing missions…those are usually retroactively put in place.”

Anybody else sick of billionaires preaching how they made money by focusing on a holier than thou mission? Jeff Lawson doesn’t do that and I love him for it.

Jeff was one of the first Amazon Web Services product managers and joined without knowing what it even meant. He was interviewed by the current CEO of Amazon, Andy Jassy, who told AWS was a secret but that “it’s really cool”. Jeff doesn’t pretend he joined for anything other than excitement. He didn’t know it would be worth $500bn someday.

Likewise, he built Twilio because he was a nerd who loved building stuff. He enjoyed the process itself rather than thinking about anything bigger than him.

Be honest with yourself, are you the same? I enjoy helping people but I love the challenge of what I do the most. I might not be changing the world but I am having a lot of fun.

Based on interviews with Secret Leaders and NFX.

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Why A Billionaire Entrepreneur Is Boxing A Former Heavyweight Champion

Amardeep — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 08:00:32 +0000

The remarkable story of Joe Fournier

Edited by the author — original image from Pixabay

What would you do if you were a billionaire? Joe Fournier has probably done it.

He’s dated world-famous stars like Paris Hilton.
He’s jumped on a private jet to see his friend Usher sing.
He cruises around Greek islands in his private yacht.

Yet I doubt you would agree to fight a former world heavyweight boxing champion in the ring. But Joe has agreed to do this too at 38 years old.

He isn’t your typical billionaire despite his fancy Instagram and even reveals:

“People don’t know the real me because it’s not interesting! People want to see hanging out with Usher. I enjoy my real life more. I made my bed and I will lie in it.”

Joe’s outlook on life is an insight into the harsh reality that all the money and fame in the world isn’t everything.

Belief like Ai Weiwei

Joe didn’t have it easy growing up, he was raised by his single mother and survived on government benefits. He was bullied relentlessly for being poor and his French-Italian background at school. Despite his current position, it’s sad to know no one would hang out with him after school.

When you think billionaire playboy, the last person who you think they’d relate to is the Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei. Yet when he started collecting art, he felt an instant connection because they were both judged by everyone around them.

“Like Weiwei, I always knew, since I was a child, that I was going to make it, but I never knew how. He knew what he was going to do, he always had the vision and he wasn’t going to stop until he did it.”

This unwavering belief meant he became the captain of the England national basketball team and helped him earn millions playing for teams in the USA. His income from his sporting days gave him the initial capital to start his entrepreneurial journey.

It’s this same self-confidence that means he is happy to walk into the ring with a monster.

100 paid friends in Dubai won’t make you happy

Joe has seized every opportunity given to him in business. He started in the fitness industry then real estate and then onto nightclubs. He’s honest about why he made such a shift and it’s depressing.

Joe switched because he found it easier to convince people to get drunk than to get healthy.

He traded his principles for money and paid the price for it. In 2015, he had no resemblance to the man who was once a top athlete as the partying took its toll on him. His mental health had deteriorated despite the glamourous lifestyle.

“But this year in Dubai I threw a birthday party but was so lonely. Nobody really knew me. All my real mates were in England. I paid for 100 people to eat and drink but none of them cared about me. I felt alone.”

The boy who was bullied and poor was now rich and popular but it didn’t feel like it was meant to.

I can relate to Joe as someone who was shy and awkward as a teenager. I dreamt of being successful so I could live a life like Joe where I was adored. I guess Joe and I shared envy of those who had everything. I’m glad it didn’t take me to the excess it took Joe to.

Boxing the antidote to Joe’s depression

Luckily, one of Joe’s famous friends is the former world heavyweight champion, David Haye. Seeing how much Joe was struggling, David invited him to train in his boxing gym.

There was a total transformation. Within 14 months Joe was back to an elite level of fitness and had won nine professional fights. The training was brutal but this billionaire didn’t want to relax under the sun on his yacht anymore.

All the wealth in the world doesn’t matter if you’re head isn’t in the right place.

“Boxing is good for my mental health. Tyson Fury is a big advocate of this. It keeps me from drinking too much, keeps me healthy and gives me a goal.” — Joe Fournier

It might not be everyone’s choice to find happiness in their lives but that’s the point. What success means for you doesn’t have to look like Instagram or whatever everyone else thinks.

Joe went down the path of everything you see in the magazines and it didn’t work for him. Getting in the ring to prove his mate wrong gives him the spark to keep fighting in life.

You’re ambitious but make sure you choose the best lifestyle for you if things work out. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

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How a $2 Billion Company Without an HR Department Is Thriving

Amardeep — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 08:00:07 +0000

Is Octopus Energy’s model the future?

Created by the author — original image public domain

1600 employees.

$3bn annual revenue.

No HR department.

It seems impossible and you’d think every day would be on the brink of disaster. Yet it’s working for Octopus Energy.

It’s all because the founder Greg Jackson takes an unconventional approach to company building. He’s a serial entrepreneur who preferred to learn the HR and IT functions than to create dedicated departments.

In a small company, this isn’t uncommon yet it’s unheard of for something of Octopus Energy’s size. It doesn’t appear to have disrupted their growth as their valuation soared from zero to a $2bn valuation in just 6 years.

You might be expecting to search online and a flood of negative employee reviews but the opposite is true. Somehow Octopus has maintained a 4.6 rating out of 5 on Glassdoor with a good sample size of 175 reviews.

How are they thriving without an HR department?

Treat people like adults instead of babies

When I applied for graduate roles, there was a funny dance I had to do in interviews for large companies. They all said they wanted someone who could take on responsibility and I’d try to prove this through examples.

The interviewer and I both knew in reality I would be expected to shut up and do as I was told for at least the first few years.

It’s part of the reason why I started my career at a boutique consultancy instead. I felt bad for my peers who believed the dream they were sold by job adverts. In many cases, you’re nothing more than a cog in a machine.

Greg wants to follow through on the promises made in the recruitment process. He wants to hire the best people and not put them in constraints or tie them up in bureaucracy. He doesn’t believe in “infantilizing” his employees.

The lack of strict company-wide guidelines means if someone wants more responsibility and promotion then they are welcome to try. They aren’t held back by arbitrary rules. Managers and their charges are expected to be reasonable with each other rather than rely on an employee handbook.

Swimming lessons

Greg is clear he doesn’t just throw managers in at the deep end and see if they sink. He gives them support and training so they are prepared for potential problems. Yet he doesn’t want to micromanage them:

“But we don’t tell them how to manage their team, they do it in ways which suit them and their team. There’s no fear of hierarchy, so managers’ managers have good visibility. This is essentially what we are replicating. We are creating micro-businesses across the company, just on a much larger scale.” — Greg Jackson

This structure empowers managers to be like entrepreneurs. Their passions can shine through rather than ticking boxes. This mindset is strengthened by permanent staff owning 5% of the business. The aim is to create a sense of everyone being in it together.

The pandemic tested this model and employees were encouraged to give suggestions of how to make sure people were supported. It led to Octopus creating a “listening ear program” where a trained psychotherapist teaches others how to support their peers with mental health issues. This is a voluntary program but means everyone always has someone to turn to.

Heads out of the sand

This might sound deluded still. It’s another story of a CEO who has no idea his employees are unhappy.

This would be unfair as Greg considers the people at his company so important that it should be him as CEO who takes the ultimate decisions rather than passing it off to an HR department.

Octopus Energy has an employee app where employees are asked questions about their satisfaction and can raise concerns. Greg says every Monday, the leadership team analyzes all this data as well as a breakdown of which divisions have people leaving.

This data dump means the early signs of discontent can be spotted and the root causes dealt with. While managers are empowered and adapt if their team is unhappy.

The lack of an HR department means the recruitment process takes longer but managers know their future employees much better.

“We hire people who care!” — Greg Jackson

Their performance speaks for itself

Greg’s logic is the fewer departments, the more streamlined the company and the faster it can grow.

In 2021, Octopus Energy has been racking up awards:

#23 on fastest-growing companies in Europe by Financial Times
The first energy provider to be recommended by Which? for four years in a row
12th on UK Customer Service Index — the only energy company in the Top 50!

Octopus Energy is also one of the few providers to have 100% renewable energy.

Happy employees. Fast-growing. Great service. And environmentally friendly!

It sounds like a dream for a responsible entrepreneur and it will be interesting to see if they can keep up this momentum. The company is still young and when it’s growing at this pace, there is a lot of challenges in the future. Greg’s interview with the BBC put a target on his back with many HR leaders unhappy.

The big caveat

The problem of having no HR department is you are dependent on a good-hearted CEO. If you have a problem with the boss, you’re screwed.

The startup world is littered with scandals from CEOs who crossed boundaries. THINX CEO, Miki Agrawal is alleged to have inappropriately touched her staff and taken calls whilst on the toilet. Travis Kalanick was forced to step down as Uber CEO after several serious allegations .

The paradox is the leaders who think they don’t need an HR department are the ones who need it the most. A well-run HR department can form a powerful counterbalance to a larger-than-life CEO.

Greg admits this himself.

He is a people person so the system works for Octopus and from employee reviews, the feeling seems to be returned. He had two decades of experience working in multiple companies before creating this successful structure.

He recommends founders do what suits their strengths. If they aren’t someone who wants to spend significant portions of their time looking after their people, then they should give the responsibility to someone else.

What Octopus Energy has done is prove an alternate model is possible and with the right CEO can lead to success.

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Why Warren Buffett Called Berkshire Hathaway A $200bn Mistake

Amardeep — Tue, 18 May 2021 11:49:17 +0000

All over 1/8th of a dollar per share

Created by the author — Original image from Wikimedia Commons

It’s hard to believe Warren Buffett was once young and emotional. We’re so used to seeing him at the top of Forbe’s rich list that we forget he’s not perfect.

In 1964, he was already a millionaire but made what he calls “a monumentally stupid decision”.

He had spotted a remarkable opportunity to make money at a failing textile business called Berkshire Hathaway. The management was selling their excess mills and using the profits to buy back their own stock. All Buffett had to do was hold his shares until they knocked on his door with a high enough offer.

As expected, Seabury Stanton, the man in charge, sent out a letter one day asking to buy shares from shareholders. He agreed on a price of $11.50 with Buffett and both men seemed happy. Yet these were the days before email so it took weeks for the agreement to arrive in Buffett’s postbox.

The contract had a small surprise. Stanton had lowered the offer by an eighth of a dollar. A small difference but Buffett didn’t think so:

“This made me mad. So I went out and started buying the stock, and I bought control of the company, and fired Mr. Stanton.” — Warren Buffett

When I get angry, I go for a walk or eat junk food. I don’t spend most of my company’s wealth to prove a point!

This fit of rage cost Warren Buffett spectacularly. He claimed in 2010 that “Berkshire would be worth twice as much as it is now” if it hadn’t started as a failed textile company. He estimated the loss as $200bn or about what Salesforce and PepsiCo are worth today.

While it’s useful to learn from the successes of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, it’s just as important to learn from their mistakes.

Rage is not a good look

Seabury Stanton, the man who Buffett took delight in firing, was 72 years old at the time. He had spent his entire adult life working for Berkshire Hathaway and had been training his son to take over when he retired.

Something doesn’t feel right about a young millionaire going out of his way to fire a senior citizen.

When you think about it, the difference in what Stanton offered to pay for the shares was only 1% less than the agreement. It’s even more ridiculous when you realize Buffett bought the shares at $7.50 so would have made a 50% return in two years anyway!

This was far from the crime of the century.

By being so sensitive to a perceived insult, Buffett put his investors’ wealth at risk as well as his reputation. I would not be happy if I was invested in his fund and found out he used my money to fund his personal vendetta without a plan to make any profit.

At the time, no one could have known Berkshire Hathaway would be transformed into an investment vehicle for companies like Coca-Cola and Bank of America. To call it a good decision would be abusing hindsight and few would have made this claim at the time.

Sometimes in business, people will act in a way you don’t like and it’s tempting to want to react. Will you be proud of yourself in 50 years’ time if you react in anger? You can’t let people’s actions get to you and potentially set you on a destructive path.

Buffett’s friend, Charlie Munger, advised him against taking control of Berkshire Hathway but was ignored. By listening to someone you trust when you feel emotional, you can help avoid a potential catastrophe. The history books will be kind to Buffett but you can’t be sure they’ll be the same for you.

Act with integrity even when you think someone else hasn’t.

Get out of the swamp

‘When a manager with a reputation for brilliance, meets up with a business with a reputation for bad economics, it’s the reputation of the business that remains intact.’ — Warren Buffett

Buffett would have never bought a textile company in a rational state of mind. The industry was in decline and it doesn’t match any of the logic he has since made world-famous. Yet even after achieving his goal of dishing out revenge to Seabury Stanton, he didn’t cut his losses.

Stubbornness can be a virtue for an entrepreneur but it can often be a sin.

Buffett didn’t want to give up so put a “terrific” manager and even bought another failing textile company hoping for synergies. Nothing worked. He kept throwing good resources into the hole for a further 20 years. As he says “even stupidity has its limits.”

It’s sad when people with high potential waste their talents where the chances of success are so low and they could be making an impact elsewhere. You can have the fastest car in the world but if you drive it through a swamp, it isn’t going anywhere.

Entrepreneurs need courage and a sprinkle of self-delusion to believe they can do something others can’t. It’s critical not to overdose on the second part to avoid making the same mistake as Buffett. We can all appreciate he is a business genius and he admitted defeat so you can too.

Hopefully, you can do it faster than he did and free up your life to do other great things.

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Based on Warren Buffett’s 2014 Shareholder report and his 2010 CNBC interview.

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The Man Who Built a $500bn Division Will Now Become Amazon CEO

Amardeep — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 08:19:23 +0000

Meet Jeff Bezos’s successor: Andy Jassy

Created by the author — original image from Wikimedia Commons

“No, I didn’t know what my job was going to be, or what my title was going to be. It was super important to the Amazon people that we come that Monday.” — Andy Jassy

When Andy started working at an online bookstore in 1997, no one could have predicted he would one day be running a $1.7 trillion empire.

Those first few years were far from glamorous. Amongst other things, he was Jeff Bezos’s personal technical assistant and floated around other roles. A more stereotypically ambitious person might have left to start their own company but Andy stuck around and as result will go down in tech history.

Away from all the media attention and headlines, he created a small division called Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2006. Without getting too nerdy, it provides a service to other massive companies like Netflix to host all of their content in the cloud. It is in these relative shadows where Andy operated for over a decade as he built something spectacular.

You probably think Amazon’s online retail division where you buy batteries is massive and you wouldn’t be wrong. Yet AWS brings in over half the profits of the entire company on just 12% of the total revenue. Amazon is a cloud computing company with a side hustle of dominating global online retail.

Everyone has heard of Jeff Bezos; both his flaws and gifts. It’s almost reassuring to understand the mindset behind someone with such immense power in the world. Yet many of us know nothing about who Andy Jassy is and I think it’s time that changed.

No thrills

“You can’t feel 30 per cent smarter when the stock is up 30 per cent, because then it means you have to feel 30 per cent dopier when the stock is down 30 per cent, and usually neither is true” — Andy Jassy

Many entrepreneurs are obsessed with looking cool. They rush to create sleek brands and pick names with missing vowels. They want to fix a problem most people didn’t even realize they had. They chase revenue numbers to brag about while at the same time have no idea how they will make a profit.

Andy Jassy is made of different stuff. It took 3 years from ideation at a retreat with all the top Amazon executive to the first proper product launch for AWS. He never made revenue predictions or oversold what the division would become. The user experience of AWS is a nightmare except for people well-versed in the tech world. This is a product built for people in the know and there was no attempt to dumb it down.

Though what AWS had was a clear selling point. Many businesses ran their own servers, which was often hell because of the expense and lack of flexibility. It was an unwanted burden thought necessary because it was the only safe way to store data. All Andy needed to do was prove them wrong.

Many of the early clients were startups who needed computing power but didn’t want to be slowed down by having to build all their own infrastructure. As these companies blossomed, so did AWS’s reputation.

The big transformational win came from the CIA who migrated from a legacy IBM system. If the Central Intelligence Agency could trust Andy Jassy’s AWS then so could the rest of the world. It took 10 years for the first $10bn but only a year to go from $30bn to $40bn in 2020.

God-level Intrapreneurship

According to some, you can never be successful unless you are your own boss. They paint being an employee as living torture and claim people need to open their eyes and be free. Andy Jassy’s story is proof this hyperbole is nonsense.

Andy’s AWS division was valued at an incredible $500bn by the Economist. This would make it worth more than Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and put it in the top 10 publically traded companies in the world.

Not bad for a guy who kept the same boss for 24 years.

The truth is AWS could only have been built at Amazon. It started as a technology designed to help Amazon develop new products faster but the wider market opportunity was clear. No other company could have started building similar software and have a tech giant as a client from the start. This meant they could and they did learn faster than everyone else.

“We treat Amazon’s consumer business as an external customer.” — Andy Jassy

Andy is a company man through and through. The Financial Times notes how often he uses company slogans to make points in his interviews. You might consider him corporate and boring but you cannot deny the impact he’s had on the world. Sometimes it pays to stay at a company and be fully immersed.

Better than Bezos?

Usually, when an idolized founder-CEO announces they are stepping down, the stock price takes a hit. People struggled to imagine Microsoft without Bill Gates or Apple without Steve Jobs. Yet the opposite happened when Bezos stepped down.

This implies stock market investors are confident in Andy Jassy’s abilities though many believe Bezos will still have a hand in the company.

It’s not only the investors who think Amazon may be better under Andy. According to a survey, 90% of employees believe work-life balance will be improved under the new regime. The majority believe it is a “good decision” to make him CEO despite many taking a “wait-and-watch” approach.

If I were to ever take over from a world-famous founder, reading how happy the employees seem to be for me would mean everything. It’s a fantastic testament to his service at the company. Early AWS employee, Manny Medina calls Jassy “Not less smart [than Bezos], just way more approachable”.

To be loved by investors and employees yet unknown to the wider public is an interesting mix. It shows he is more focused on what matters than the whole world knowing how good he is. It seems Amazon is in good hands and scarily it seems Andy thinks the company has barely begun.

“One of the amazing things about AWS and Amazon is that we‘re still such a small overall share of the market segments in which we address. It’s still very early days.” — Andy Jassy

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