Warren Buffet was once asked by Jeff Bezos a long time friend of his: “you are the second richest man in the world and yet you have the simplest investment thesis. How come others didn’t follow this?” To which Warren Buffets responded: “because no one wants to get rich slowly”
In a nutshell that’s what’s wrong (or rather what’s not quite right) with a lot of the investment community today, from public markets to private equity investors and unfortunately it trickles down into too many companies. You can’t time-box success. You can’t sprint a marathon. And you can’t measure success with speed but only by the magnitude (and significance) of the end result. Building to flip is easy. Building to last is difficult and you cannot take short cuts.continue reading »
The last decade or so has been paradise for entrepreneurs mainly because as the world shifted more online and on mobile devises there was so much low hanging fruit up for grabs.
Times are now changing. This is not to say that there’s no longer opportunities. There will always be. But now they are shifting to much harder problems to solve.
Much like any new revolution. When industrialization happened, anyone with a conveyor belt a-la Henry Ford’s could churn half-decent products out the door that would sell. Not for very long but they’d sell.
Today to compete in manufacturing you need state of the art equipment, R&D and people. And you probably need to be in China to compete on price.
The same is happening in technology I believe. The name of the game for the past two decades was getting content and inventory online and creating tools to make it discoverable. Starting with the browser, then directories like Yahoo and Craigslist, then search engines like Google, then social networks like Facebook and now Instagram.continue reading »
2013 was without a shadow of doubt the most intense, eventful and transformational year for my company PeoplePerHour since it’s founding in 2008. And so as the year comes to an end I reflected as I usually do on what the key learning from the year have been for me. continue reading »
A quick hello from me
Hi there. I’m Stefani (girl in the picture above though not quite as sweet-looking in real life) and I’m the founder of be-snazzy.com ; an online boutique where you can browse unique accessories and clothing made by funky independent designers from all over the world.
I’m 25 years old, well OK going on 26 but 25 sounds much younger so I might just stick to that for the next couple of years (!), and I decided to start be-snazzy.com because I simply loved discovering those hidden gems in London’s fashion markets and through my travels, but I couldn’t quite get anything remotely close to that experience online. I kept thinking, “there are so many stunning, one-of-a-kind pieces of jewellery, handmade bags, handpainted tees and the likes out there and you can get them for amazing prices; so why does everybody insist on buying their clothes from the high street or high end shopping malls?”
“Why does everybody look the same?”
Maybe the answer lies somewhere in between the fact that most people don’t know where to find all these beautiful things, or that they just don’t have the time. So I decided to devote my time in doing exactly that. Scouring London’s markets, the cobbled streets of Greek Islands (where I love to spend my Summer holidays) and asking around for designers who are only known by word-of-mouth. I also spent my hours browsing through online designer marketplaces for that extra special one that caught my eye, and I decided to pick my absolute favourites and bring them to be-snazzy.com .
If I didn’t think “wow” then I just tossed them aside into my pile of maybes/not so much until I was absolutely certain of which ones I wanted to add.
So here it is then; a brand, if you like, featuring a highly-curated, handpicked selection of independent designers who have the X-Factor. Take a look and let me know what you think. But please, please don’t come to be-snazzy looking for a little black dress or a grey vest; I’m sure there are plenty of Zaras, Topshops and H&Ms in the world for you to get those.
If, on the other hand, you are looking to spice up your wardrobe with extraordinary accessories and bags that will have people asking you where you got them from, then please do stop by and feel free to contact me for anything.
Be different, be snazzy
Stefani x
Cool new fashion startup in the making. Watch this space people
1. PowerPoint
If you can’t stand up and convey what you want to say, at most with some scribbles on a white board, you most probably have no clue what you are talking about. And even if you do you lack the confidence and the succinctness to convey it. So go get a job at IBM
2. Voting – of any kind !
Startups are not democracies. They are brutal dictatorships bred in trenches. Management by consensus is like trying to gather votes in the gutter when the enemy is marching full speed ready to tramp all over you. If you don’t have a strong leader who can take decisions get the hell out.
3. Meetings over 1 hour
And thats generous. If people can’t get their message across in an hour tell them to apply for the Oprah show. You dopnt have time for fluff
4. HR managers
Please. Let’s get real. The last one i had was a woman that spoke like a constipated chicken who protested when i asked her to give us a hand to move the desks when we were relocating. It wasn’t part of her duties she said. So i relieved her of any!
5. Reading Techrunch
Unless you want to be brainwashed that success = fundraising and sucking up to a bunch of nitwits who’s investment manifesto is who can blow the hottest fart out their arse without burning their pubic hair
6. Hiring ‘superstar’ been-there-done-that management material
OK we’ve heard it, enough already. A players hire A players, B players hire B & C players bla bla bla. That’s the sort of crap investors brainwash you with to turn what’s an entrepreneurial, maverick culture that gets shit done – and got your startup off the ground in the first place – to a corporate, beurcratic, red-tape-ridden, cash-draining, more-painful-than-watching-paint-dry boring culture ruled by a bunch of bozos who talk in buzzwords.
You want A players ? Hire mavericks with a chip on their shoulder with something to prove. And shit all over those so called superstars. They will poisoon your company with arrogance of the worst kind : the least deserved !
7. Counting holidays
Anyone who counts holidays in a startup doesn’t belong there. You want to count holidays ? Go work for KUONI. Put a whiteboard above your bed and tally them up. If you are a true startup-at-heart team player the only thing you count is how many steps closer you are today to hitting your target. Everything else is garbage
8. MBAs
As my uncle says “i have an MBA too. Im Married But Available”
9. Buzzwords
Anything that’s repeated more than once in an MBA book should be strictly forbidden. If you can’t express what you want to say in plain English your customers most likely won’t understand it anyway.
10. ‘Good’ stuff
As the famous book says, Good is the enemy of Great. If you develop a culture of ‘good enough’ you will build mediocre products that fail to wow people. You can only aim for Great stuff. Anything less than that is crap.
Fred Wilson wrote a great post recently on Turning Your Team which resonated with me. I made reference to it in a recent post I wrote on the PeoplePerHour Blog
The reason it resonated is because it happened to us in the past 12 months. Most of the early team has departed (including my co-founder) and been replaced by people who came much later or elevated to take on a new role.
It’s one of the hardest things for a founder to do, watch some of the most loyal and passionate people of their team depart. These people are like family to you.
But the reality is that it’s necessary for a team to scale. Comparing the then to the now I find that the differences can be summarised as follows: less passion, more execution.continue reading »
Marissa Mayer must be a genius. In just over a year here’s how the stock price of Yahoo Inc! has performed.
What’s more impressive, is that she’s achieved that without practically doing ANYTHING! continue reading »