There is no question that tech valuations are frothy (to say the least) at the moment. People however try to argue that ‘this time it’s different’, amongst other reasons a commonly cited one being that tech companies today deliver ‘real value’, have real revenues, scale etc etc.

Firstly : there’s never been a bubble in history during which a certain few were not convinced that ‘this time it’s different’. Unfortunately for the rest of the people those ‘certain few’ are often the influencers and not surprisingly the ones with the biggest vested interest in profiting from the inflated valuations that they so help drive. In the subprime mortgage bubble it was the same: a certain few convinced themselves that ‘this time it’s different’, fundamentals don’t matter, and that people could be handed mortgages way above their affordability , no matter if they couldn’t repay them, because ‘this time it’s different’.

It’s easy to cook up why this time is different. It’s harder to de-clutter the noise and figure out why the fundamentals still remain the same (as they always do).

Whilst I don’t disagree for one second that todays tech companies do actually deliver real value (after all I am a tech entrepreneur myself and I see that both in my products – PeoplePerHour.com & SuperTasker.com and the ones I use so avidly), whilst I don’t disagree that the way we live and do business is rapidly changing and being disrupted by tech, I think the ‘Valuation vs. Value’ argument is intrinsically flawed for a few reasons

1. Value is not enough

Its not enough to just deliver value. You need to do it in a way that’s sustainable in the longer term and builds on fundamentals. You can shoot for the moon overnight and fall to ashes just as fast if you’re building a business without fundamentals. Many examples come to mind, from Fab.com, Colour, Joost to more recent from our space – HomeJoy – who filed for bankruptcy a few months ago after raising ca. $100m. All of these were once amongst Silicon Valleys darlings, had multi billion valuations and some achieved hundreds of millions in revenues. Yet that wasn’t enough.

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I caught up with a good friend of mine for brunch this weekend who is also building a tech company. We’ve both been at it for roughly the same amount of time and our businesses are roughly at similar stages.

We discussed the craziness that’s happening in today’s startup landscape with valuation off the roof and companies allegedly achieving hundreds of millions in run-rate revenues within 12 months. We’re both in it for the longer term, building long lasting, value adding businesses in growing markets, that deliver products and services people find useful (or useful enough to pay for!). Which in todays world makes us sound archaic!

Sure if you build a unicorn aka a disruptive rocketship that gets a billion dollar valuation within 12 months, that is ALSO delivering sustainable value, with scalable unit economics then it’s a great achievement. However entrepreneurs today mistakenly make that the goal neglecting two very important things in my view

1. The   greater fool theory

You want to build a billion dollar business overnight? It’s easy. Go on the street and sell a dollar for 99cents. You will find there’s a lot of demand for that! In fact it’s guaranteed to go viral. You will have a big and growing hole in your pocket but all you need to do is convince a few nitwits that its temporary and very shortly you will build a ‘brand’ and become a destination. The ‘go to’ place to buy a dollar. Build some hype so that your stock gives return to batch1 of nitwits through a secondary sale to batch #2 nitwits and you’re now hot and trending!

It’s called the greater fool syndrome: who cares that you’re only making 99c to the dollar, so long as there’s a greater fool to the last one to buy your stock?! And in todays’ world one thing that seems to be in abundance is greater fools.

In more tech talk: its unit economics stupid! If you cant make a profit on your customer acquisition with a reasonable payback that you can fund (the deeper pockets you have the more you can push that out) then all you are doing is building a ponzie scheme. At best.

With the latest news on even the best, the most disruptive unicorns around us, such as Uber, allegedly losing over half a billion per annum, there’s many other seemingly amazing & disruptive (aka unicorns) that have questionable unit economics. Right now the ponzie scheme is funded by virtually zero interest rates. Capital is free and needs to be deployed. Even a 99c dollar business seems sexier, especially if gift-wrapped with some wishful thinking around it, than money sitting in the bank!

Rates will soon rise though, how soon we don’t know but they will. They cant go lower. The froth will start coming off the cappuccino. Capital dries up or shrinks,   there’s now less greater fools in supply ready to scoop up the stock and alas we have a crunch.

Next thing you know is your investors turns up at the next board meeting and goes “say, can you send me a slide on your unit economics? I think we should turn the business profitable” Bam. You’re toast.

2. Building a unicorn is not a strategy

The above argument aside, some unicorns may have the right unit economics. However building one is not a strategy. It’s like playing roulette. To paraphrase Warren Buffet “its easier to ride the wave than trying to create it”. So, much like in surfing, preparing for and positioning yourself at the right place and the right time ready to ride the wave when it comes IS a strategy. Trying to create it is wishful thinking.

What we don’t see at the outset is that, aside of the fact that a lot of these seemingly super sexy disruptive businesses are essentially a 99c to dollar businesses, even the ones that aren’t were seldom if ever a concerted plan. They just happened. Uber was started as an app for Travis and his friends. Facebook and so many others were just apps that were hacked together by kids in a dorm room and caught fire. Whatsapp, Snapchat and Instagram arguably still aren’t businesses. They’re apps with a very loose idea of how to make money at best.

There’s nothing wrong with that if you have the time and capacity to play around enough till something catches fire, and so long as you can convince Zuck to buy it. But you have better chances if you just go to Vegas! Its not a strategy to building a business.

The only sensible strategy is to sit at that interjection between delivering customer value via products and services that are building for the future and keep innovating. Pick the right macro, build a great team and hang in there, surviving one day at a time. If you do you can’t lose. You may not get rich overnight but you will build a lasting business, and as Buffet showed will eventually make more money than those nitwits put together. By investing in long term value creation.

Fads come and go. Value stays.

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I recently wrote this article for Forbes as i feel that the nature, context and value that entrepreneurship brings to the world is evolving fast, and hence is its definition.  Read the full piece here: Rethinking the definition of ‘Entrepreneur’ 

Entrepreneurs are integral to the success of the U.S. economy. According to figures from Forbes, over 50% of the working population is at a small business, equating to over 120 million people. That’s a lot of competition.

Calling yourself an entrepreneur is to define yourself as many things: You are declaring yourself an innovator and a risk taker, and may find yourself pigeonholed with assumptions and stereotypes. However, an entrepreneur cannot be defined by a group of characteristics.

As the traditional route of finding employment has become increasingly challenging, the aspiration to become an entrepreneur has risen, making the original definition of entrepreneur problematic. Forty-three percent of Americans believe there are good opportunities for entrepreneurship, up by more than 20% since 2011. These days, you can be an entrepreneur if you’re a mother making wedding cakes during the school day, or a young horseback rider setting up a business introducing buyers to sellers of the finest dressage horses. You don’t need a flashy office or lots of space; 69% of new businesses in the U.S. start at home, and 59% of established businesses are home-based. So then the term entrepreneur — what does it actually mean?

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his year marks 10 years of being an entrepreneur for me. Its  a big milestone. Ive spent a lot of time introspecting and asking myself “what would i have done differently if i could go back”

First id like to say that i don’t regret  one minute of the past 10 years.That not to say it was all a bowl of cherries. But even though i could have done a lot of things better or more efficiently had i known what i know today, i don’t regret one moment. Not one bit. Its been an exhilarating journey and i cherish every moment of it – the pitfalls, screw ups and the pain points as much if not more than the happy moments. Those are the moments that define you, that toughen you up. And without those you have nothing to look back to and laugh !

But if i could go back, whilst keeping the journey intact i would potentially change my outlook on certain things. I would trust myself more , my inner instinct and listen less to others  quoting text book stuff thats all good in theory but, as they say, in theory practice and theory are the same, but in practice they are not. continue reading »

I gave a fireside talk earlier today for London Innovators at Google Campus in London to a group of vibrant entrepreneurs which was most enjoyable. A few of the questions I got asked are questions I  keep getting quite often, so I’d like to share the answers I gave  below

How important is it to differentiate yourself when you start off ?

This is obviously a question that preoccupies entrepreneurs quite a lot. Sometimes too much so. I found myself citing an analogy which I often do.

If you were say BMW in the1920s and pitching the idea of creating a car, most likely the response would be “you’re late. Henry Ford and Mercedes Benz have already done that. Go home”continue reading »