Tag Archives: entrepreneurship

Full employment

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via Seth Godin

So true…

You will never be out of work if you can demonstrably offer one of the following:

  • Sales
  • Additive effort
  • Initiation

Sales speaks for itself. If you can sell enough to cover what you cost and then some, there will always be someone waiting to hire you.

Additive effort is distinguished from bureaucracy or feel-good showing up. Additive effort generates productivity far greater than the overhead you add to the organization. If your skills make the assembly line go twice as fast, or the sales force becomes more effective, or the travel office cuts its costs, then you’ve produced genuine value. That surly receptionist at the doctor’s office–she’s just filling a chair.

The third skill is the most difficult to value, but is ultimately the most valuable. If you’re the person who can initiate useful action, if you’re the one who makes something productive or transformative happen, then smart organizations will treasure you.

Vincent Bolloré

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I have the chance to be a member of the “Four Seasons Club” (in French: le club des quatre saisons), which is a private business club founded in 2003 and based in Zurich, Switzerland. It is a French-speaking club, gathering personalities from the economical, political, academic, cultural and media worlds.

The number of members is limited to 120. For me, a quite unique opportunity to speak French, my mother-tongue, and not (broken) English or (broken) German!

The Club is also an opportunity to see and to meet extremely interesting people, coming from different horizons, and not “just” the business.

On last Wednesday, we could see, listen to and meet Mr. Vincent Bolloré (wikipedia):

Vincent Bolloré (b. 1 April 1952 in Boulogne-Billancourt, France) is a French industrialist, corporate raider and businessman.

He heads the family investment group Bolloré and is ranked 451st richest person in the world according to Forbes, with an estimated fortune of US$1.7 billion. He is married, with 4 children.

Vincent Bolloré is from a well-off family from Brittany, and he graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree from Université Paris X Nanterre. Bolloré started his investment career as a bank trainee at investment bank Edmond de Rothschild.

His personal investment career began when he took over the reins at his family-controlled conglomerate Bolloré, which deals in maritime freight and African trade, and paper manufacturing (cigarette and bible paper). The company he leads today employs 33,000 people around the world.

He is a well-known corporate raider in France who has succeeded in making money by taking large stakes in French listed companies, in particular the building and construction group Bouygues, where he left with a sizeable capital gain after a power-struggle.

In late 2004, his investment group started building a stake in advertising group Havas, becoming its largest single shareholder. He mounted a coup and replaced Alain de Pouzilhac as Havas Chief Executive Officer on July 12, 2005.

In 2005, through his family company, Bolloré expanded his media interests by launching the Direct 8 television station. Towards the end of 2005, he began building a stake in independent British media planning and buying group, Aegis. As at 19 July, 2006, his stake in Aegis stood at 29%. Direct Soir, a free newspaper, was launched in June 2006. In January 2008, he manifested interest in becoming a shareholder of famed, but troubled, Italian car manufacturer Pininfarina.

He is a close personal friend of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

I haven’t known any detail about the Bolloré Group before this meeting. Actually very interesting! As Vincent Bolloré, a very charismatic and fascinating person, with quite a lot of distance and humility with his business successes. And a definitely not common strategic approach (“we do what the others don’t want to do”), with a very diversified group founded in 1822!

It was also the last day of the very long Indian Summer in Zurich.

Lifelong learning & “growth mindset”

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via Jeff Busgang

I personally like the idea that we are all able to learn during our entire life, thanks to our family and private life, thanks to our social and business activities.

I am also convinced that it is extremely important to be able to change your goals (without being frustrated) and, at the same time, to be very resilient, which is totally antinomic :-) A question of balance perhaps.

Anyway, super food for thoughts from Jeff!

[…] If you aren’t facile at adjusting your goals, and they’re overly ambitious goals, it can lead to depression.

[…] As investors, we VCs are always attracted to entrepreneurs who set big, hairy audacious goals (BHAGs).  Who wants to invest in an entrepreneur whose pitch is, “I’m going to make a nice living in a small niche,” as opposed to, “I aspire to achieve world domination”?  Yet are those entrepreneurs more susceptible to depression and defeatism when they’re unable to achieve those outrageous BHAGs?

To reconcile these two views I am reminded of an excellent book I recently read by renowned Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, called Mindset .  Dweck’s research shows that successful people in business, sports and life have “growth mindsets” rather than “fixed mindsets”.  The “growth mindset” is one in which a person believes that one’s world view is less about ability and more about lifelong learning.  “Growth mindset” individuals feel they can always learn from experiences (failures and successes) and develop resilience because they’re focused on personal growth rather than achievement tied to rigid objectives.  When a “growth mindset” individual faces adversity, they focus on the learnings and the self-improvement opportunities that come from adversity.

I have seen in my own work that the best entrepreneurs do set BHAGs, sometimes outrageous and unattainable ones (create a $100 million company in 5 years from scratch?  Is that really possible?), and push themselves to achieve excellence.  But the ones that really distinguish themselves are the ones who embrace the “growth mindset”.  They embrace life long learning, no matter how great their achievements, and allow themselves to occasionally hit the reset button and adjust their goals […]

Mark this day :-)

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Yesterday (Thursday) was an absolutely important and central milestone in the life of our company – Innoveo.

I am very proud, totally exciting for the coming steps, exhausted, and also in a way – relieved. First confirmations that our vision, strategy, and tactics are not sooo bad ;-)

As usual, a bit of luck, plus a great help and support from very smart people (hello René), and from our Team!

I remember a thought of one of my former boss, saying that:

Good stuff needs time to mature

This is absolutely true ;-) I would just extend it a bit:

Good stuff needs time AND a lot of energy to mature

Nick, mate, a big thought in your direction, you did such a great job!

Coming challenges are big, again, but first … there are coming! And second, they are super interesting!

A last one now, about “vision” :-)

(© Despair, Inc)

 

But gosh, now, I just want to sit down with a good grappa, and to appreciate this moment.

Saying “no”

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via Seth Godin

This one is again a good one from Seth:

If you’ve got talent, people want more of you. They ask you for this or that or the other thing. They ask nicely. They will benefit from the insight you can give them.

The choice: You can dissipate your gift by making the people with the loudest requests temporarily happy, or you can change the world by saying ‘no’ often.

You can say no with respect, you can say no promptly and you can say no with a lead to someone who might say yes. But just saying yes because you can’t bear the short-term pain of saying no is not going to help you do the work.

Saying no to loud people gives you the resources to say yes to important opportunities.

Crazy compensation committees and CEO’s

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via Jeff Bussgang

I am just flying into a rage when I hear all these bonus and golden-parachute stories!

All these stories with these crazy CEOs that are doing a very bad job for their companies, which need to be helped by the government and are receiving billions to save their business. And, at the same time, are delivering bonus for themselves and their managers. This is just intolerable! Do not forget, these guys are not alone, there are “great” remuneration committees that are voting these golden-parachutes and crazy bonus. Why not talking also about them?

How can employees accept this kind of behavior? They are not acceptable.

We shouldn’t wonder why CEOs have such bad reputations today, when some are acting in this way, and just impacting all the other CEOs in a very negative way…

Very nice post from Jeff expressing this point of view more in detail:

Perhaps the most successful venture capitalist in history, Sequoia’s Mike Mortiz (backer of Google, Yahoo, Paypal, to name a few reasonable wins), said in a recent interview that one of the ways he decides whether to invest in an entrepreneur is how much they plan on paying themselves. Moritz views high salaries with immense suspicion. If the founder takes a modest salary (in start-up land, that’s typically $100-200k per year – well below even President Obama’s $500k cap), he knows they believe in the future value of their business. […]

Remember, entrepreneurs aren’t saints or selfless do-gooders. They typically work 80-100 hours per week for two reasons. First, they are PASSIONATE about their venture for the sake of the business and its impact on the world more than the money (“Ask me about my business and you can’t shut me up,” confessed my friend Scott Savitz, CEO/founder of Shoebuy.com, the other day). […]

They want to prove to their investors and employees that the risk they took in investing in them and joining their cause will pay off. Why don’t Fortune 500 CEOs feel the same way? Why is it that they don’t view their role in life to prove to the shareholder that buys their stock in the public market that they took a worthy risk and they’ll be darned sure it pays off? Instead, they think it’s culturally acceptable to take outsized pay packages and perks that no educated, rational shareholder would ever approve if given the chance. […]

The behavior is in such stark contrast to what’s going on in the small business, job-creating end of the economy, it’s absurd. The public is understandably outraged. I am too. That’s why I’d fire all the compensation committee heads and turn the reigns over the start-up CEOs. […]

Marten Mickos, former MySQL CEO, is to depart Sun

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via 451 CAOS Theory

It seems that SUN will not communicate on that, but Marten Mickos, the former MySql CEO, is leaving SUN, after about 1 year… I remember one of my post in February 2008 with some explanations about the “why” of this merge, directly from Marten. Outch. Something didn’t work as planed there.

Some more information below.

I just got news that Marten Mickos, former MySQL CEO, is to depart Sun amid a reorganisation of its infrastructure and database business units. Don’t expect an announcement from Sun on this, but the news is confirmed.

[…] Marten will be transitioning out of Sun by the end of the company’s (current) third quarter.

Marten’s departure is a big loss for Sun and follows quickly after the departures of Monty Widenius and David Axmark.

[…] Matt Asay is right, Marten’s departure “is likely to lead to an exodus among MySQL’s deep talent pool”. This needn’t be a complete disaster – the same thing happened at JBoss and Red Hat has recovered from that, but this is going to be a serious test for Sun’s ability to maximize on the potential of MySQL and its other open source assets.

Matt also writes that “Mickos was the backbone of MySQL’s rising revenues, as an open-source pragmatist and visionary. He was the face of MySQL, but also of the rising open-source industry.” This is true, and for that reason I hope it’s not too long before we see him taking charge at another vendor.

Good luck to Marten, hope to see him asap in a new role!

What is a great software company

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via Judith Hurwitz

Judith is discussing the difference between a good and a great software company.

Interesting insights!

1. Great companies start with a predictable business model and turn the model upside down. They look three years ahead and experiment with innovation. They have to have a combination of intuition, risk, and innovation. These companies are willing to take enough risk to win big but smart enough to know the difference between great opportunities and pipe dreams.

2. Great companies find new areas to position themselves for leadership. This is very tough to pull off. The area has to be important enough for the market to pay attention to but not too big that they look silly.  Great companies never try to take a big existing market with established leaders and try to claim primacy.

3. Great companies build great relationships. Management at these companies builds an ecosystem of influencers including great customers who will talk about the value, press, analysts, and partners who together help the company create a persona of innovation and greatness while the company is still building.

Great software companies are complicated to build.   The software business a complicated and brutal with  lots of failures at every turn.  […] It isn’t easy. Great software companies are even more difficult and scary to build.

Innoveo Skye – Product strategy workshop

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Yesterday and today, workshop with the Innoveo Management Team near Zurich for refining and documenting our Innoveo Skye™ (content, scope, roadmap) software solution for insurances (front-end and distribution).

More information there about Skye™.