Entrepreneurs in The Age Of Covid: Q&A with America's Leading Startup Thinker, Carl Schramm https://news360.com/article/529879970

Entrepreneurs in The Age Of Covid: Q&A with America's Leading Startup Thinker, Carl Schramm

https://news360.com/article/529879970

Jack Ma's lessons for success

https://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-jack-ma-s-lessons-for-success-2665333

Jack Ma, the legendary founder of the e-commerce giant Alibaba recently decided to step down as chairman and pursue his philanthropic interests in education. A former English teacher, he co-founded Alibaba in 1999, and grew the firm into a global giant. What lessons can budding Indian entrepreneurs learn from Jack Ma’s career? Besides the most obvious ones of persistence, hard work, focus, and courage, here are a few other critical lessons that Jack Ma has taught us about entrepreneurship.

Act Fast

Opportunities in life come randomly when you least expect them. Most people spend time agonising over the risks. By the time they are ready to take the first tentative step, the opportunity is lost. The best entrepreneurs, people like Bill Gates and Jack Ma, are blessed with the analytical ability to peer into the future, quickly size up the opportunity and take the plunge. Gates started Microsoft despite the presence of giants like IBM, and Jack Ma started a private company in an environment dominated by state-run companies.

Use a shotgun approach

It is easier to shoot down a target with a shotgun which sprays pellets over a wide range than a pistol. Jack Ma attributes his success to his desire to search for opportunities going far beyond his professional and financial capabilities. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is neither a scientist nor an aeronautical engineer, but has ventured into building spaceships to take people to Mars—that’s going far beyond personal capabilities.

No one can do everything

The best businesses are built not by a brilliant founder but by people who understand the value of cooperation and are humble enough to accept that their employees often know more than them. People who believe they are irreplaceable build companies that don’t outlast them. Successful entrepreneurs like Jack Ma recognise that there are a lot of very smart and hardworking people out there. 

In his retirement letter, he said: “You find the best people you can to help, work with them to do better, and create structures that can last past your final participation.”

Behold yourself as a giant

The best entrepreneurs don’t limit themselves in their mind. Don’t think locally, think globally. It is through that thought process that you identify the weaknesses of your product offering and develop a framework to put together the resources required to grow. And, as Jack Ma said, thinking alone is not enough; thought must be accompanied by action. “Think big and act as if you were a giant.”

Customers first, employees second

Jack Ma used to spend 60 per cent of his time every day speaking to customers and understanding what they wanted. Many entrepreneurs get fixated on the greatness of their product offering without ever asking customers what they want. 

So, do what Jack did—spend more time trying to understand what the market wants rather than trying to push what you think the market should have. Jack Ma also invested heavily in finding the best employees. In the early days of Alibaba, Jack would even give equity to the high school students working with him. As one executive puts it: “[Jack Ma] wasn’t the type of person who starts a business keeping 90 per cent of the equity for himself and hoarding all of the wealth and riches.” 

By empowering his workers with an ownership mentality, Jack got the best out of his team. He believed that employees with “skin in the game” were critical to the success of a business.

Entrepreneurship is a long-term game

If you are thinking quick bucks, its time to sit down and re-evaluate your goals. The best businesses are built not by people who think of short-term riches but those who dream of long-term success. Short-term thinking often leads to shortcuts and compromises – the worst of which is compromising on integrity to make a quick buck. Cheating a customer or lying about your product offering to make a quick sale are not the hallmarks of entrepreneurs. That’s what hustlers do. As Ma said, “we got successful today not because we did a great job today, but because we had a great dream 15 years ago.” Having a long-term vision also requires reserves of new ideas to continually draw upon.

Think cooperation and connectivity

Some of the most successful products today are the result of collaboration and connectivity. Apple’s iPhone requires parts supplied by companies many of which compete with Apple in other products. Uber depends critically on Google Maps a company with which it is in direct competition for autonomous cars. Success in today’s business world requires the ability to cooperate directly or indirectly with other businesses and not crush anyone who crosses your path. But cooperation requires humility and no one exhibited that better than the ever-smiling, diminutive Jack Ma.

Business success is a little part wisdom, a little part vision and a whole lot of willingness to take a risk and endure failure. Jack Ma rose from a poor background to become one of the wealthiest men in Asia because he had a clear set of principles to guide him. As he very presciently said when he first started Alibaba, “As entrepreneurs, today is very difficult. Tomorrow is even more difficult. But the day after tomorrow is very beautiful.” What a beautiful message for Indian entrepreneurs.

The author is Founder of Ideafundz.com, a venture-capital fund. Views are personal.

Four simple steps for entrepreneurs

I have already done this way back in 2002 when i dissolved my whole staff and started working in a new way with exactly these four steps. I just created these ideas on my  own at that time. Nobody was there to teach me. I took a very big risk. But it paid off by the grace of Allah. And am using social media to the fullest for my work. Meeting so many experts from around the world. Facebook really changed the whole world.

Source Article: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/312056  https://news360.com/article/451214170

4 Ways Modern Entrepreneurs Break Through Old Barriers to Start New Businesses

The challenges facing the aspiring entrepreneurs are not new but the tools they have available certainly are.

Parth Misra

 

- Guest Writer

Content Strategist, Writer at Quill Canvas

Starting a business has always been considered one of the more difficult career choices. However, the acute interest with which millennials are pursuing it has changed this perspective. Indeed, entrepreneurship has a charm that is hard to resist. Why shouldn’t it be? The promise of going after what one truly wants, personal and financial freedom and make meaningful contributions to humanity is something that we all deeply cherish.

However, behind all the optimism and notions of limitless potential lies an unfortunate fact -- starting and running a company is (still) exceedingly risky. After all, there is a very good reason why 90 percent startups crash and burn by their second year. Reasons for such a startling failure rate are many, but fundamentally boil down to…

• Securing funds. In a survey in London, two-thirds of respondents said that getting financial backing was their biggest hurdle.
• Lack of planning usually resulting from no experience running a business.
• Trouble securing and maintaining a talented team of professionals.
• Not knowing what the market wants.

It’s easy for entrepreneurs to quickly become overwhelmed as they come face to face with the fact that running a company takes a LOT more work than they imagined. There are a number of variables that need to be taken into account.

One of the bigger assumptions that cripple businessmen and women alike is the notion that things must be done a certain way. It is all too common to see people with big ideas infatuated with having a large office, thinking they can do it all alone, running after VC firms for funding, having onsite staffs all the time and so on. These self-imposed restrictions do little to help them, and everything to hamper their efforts.

That being said, these problems are not new, and little do people realize that they have access to tools that can make thing a lot easier. In fact, with a bit of creativity, they can slash many of the more common problems that all entrepreneurs face. Here are four ways you can do just that.

Recruit smarter for a leaner, more effective team.

When you are strapped for cash, the risk of bad hires is too great to ignore. Full-time employees are usually more expensive as you have to pay monthly salaries and cover benefits. Not to mention, you will always find out too late whether they are any good or not. There is even evidence to suggest that an inhouse employees takes up to two years before becoming fully productive.

In such situations, startups can find great talent through the internet, too. Freelancers and contractors offer many advantages over in-house employees. Since freelancers work with multiple companies simultaneously, their employers needn’t cover their benefits or social security. They work on their own equipment which is another expense companies can not only forgo, but leverage as well.

An  employer can test through multiple candidates and find the right ones at a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time employee. As freelancers may be located anywhere, it’s easy to create teams in different time-zones and work around the clock, too. Freelancers usually charge per project which makes them cheaper, and are easier to on-board and ramp, making scaling large projects effortless.

The biggest advantage remote working brings to the table is the ability to hire talent that traditionally wasn’t even available to employers. As your workforce becomes remote, you will no longer need to invest in an expensive office, infrastructure and slash operating costs. More affordable options like co-working spaces, working from home (or coffee shops), small business incubators and virtual offices are great alternatives that will work just as well.

Related: Top 5 Ways Freelancers Can Stay Competitive in the Gig Economy

Discovering opportunities and finding what works.

Part of the challenge (and thrill) of starting your own venture is finding out whether your ideas have any real value. We all tend to think “of course my product is useful,” but is that how people in your target market feel as well?

Finding this key piece of information can make or break your enterprise. Fortunately, there are smart ways out there you can use to feel the pulse of your market.

As you go along, you will begin to gather invaluable first-hand information on what the market wants, which marketing messages work best and which features are most wanted. At this point, it will be wise to make a list of email subscribers out of the people who are purchasing through you as well. Your list will become your most vital asset when you launch your own product. By the time you’re ready, you will have a battle tested game plan and will simply need to supplement the products you are promoting with your own.

Online product reviews: While product reviews are a great way to know whether a product delivers on its promises or not, it is also a free way to gauge what works and what doesn’t. Look for trends in reviews of products that are from your would be competitors. There are review portals for every kind of service so, finding reviews for research shouldn’t be a problem. Some review sites you can look into are…

• Amazon, Ebay, Jet: For consumer goods.
• Tripadvisor, Airbnb, HomeAway: For travel and tourism.
• Google Places, Yelp, YP: For small and local businesses.

Find a vacuum in your local market: Some of the biggest chains in the world started off small. Finding what your local community needs can be a great way to get your foot in the (business) door. That being said, locating a hidden niche in your neck of the woods is easier said than done.

Your own experience can be a great asset here. Are you aware of any products that you wished were locally available but you simply couldn’t find? You can also hop onto Google’s Keyword Tool and search for keywords related to such products specific to your city or town to see if there is any demand.

Related: How to Determine If There's a Market for Your Business Idea

Automate that marketing.

So, you have a great team and you know what the market wants, and you’re all set to begin. But as you throw the on-switch, you realize there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to do it all. Marketers often find themselves juggling between different tasks and campaigns until they are ready to drop! Happens with the best of us.

Thankfully, there are a plethora of tools out there with which you can put many of your business functions on autopilot. Since marketing will be one of your business’s more important functions in its heydays, it’s best to automate as much as you can. This way you can spend more time developing your product/service and expanding your empire.

Marketing automation can help you save a lot of time. You need not login to your CMS everytime you need to post to social media, send an email or post a blog. All of these can be setup in advance which means you will have more time to tackle the real problems. The above infographic reveals that…

• Automating social media posts can save upto six hours a week.
• Reply rate can be increased by as much as 250 percent by automating email outreach.
• 80 percent of the time can be saved by setting up appointments through an automated tool.

Marketing automation tools also come with awesome dashboards which make managing and tracking marketing campaigns easier. More importantly, they provide the right information at the right time that allows for faster, more accurate decisions.

Finally, marketing automation allows you to personalize content to different user segments and remain in contact with them. Such a feature is crucial for companies that want to build a brand as they can design and distribute content for people in different stages of the sales funnel and help them when needed.

Related: 7 Tools to Automate Your Marketing Tasks (Without Blowing Your Budget)

Become a social media ace.

By now everyone knows that social media is good for business. Unfortunately, few people know how to leverage it and turn social channels into effective marketing mediums. Part of the problem lies in the fact that businesses still think of social media as just another sales channel where people will respond favorably to pitches. Nothing can be farther from the truth!

Social media is best thought of as a gathering of family and friends rather than a tradeshow. People hop onto Facebook, Twitter or Instagram to stay in touch with people they know, to learn about what’s going on in the world, to consume funny or entertaining content and to meet new people. Notice finding products or services doesn’t feature on this list, and it’s best we proceed accordingly.

Brands that become social media stars know they need to engage with their audiences on a personal level. The 70-20-10 strategy is a well tested method for social media marketing. Here’s how it works…

• 70 percent of the content you share should be informative and insightful.
• 20 percent of the content you share should be from other sources.
• 10 percent of the content you share should be promotional.

Related: 7 Content Marketing Books to Read in 2018

The better you understand your market and its pain-points, the greater the chance of a first hit home run. Obviously, this means doing your homework before getting started. Founding a company in the traditional sense is at best a peripheral attribute of business which itself is best defined as a process to achieve desired results. How this process should look and work depends entirely on your own goals.

With the tools and methods available today, you can easily develop a small-scale prototype of the process that you intend to use. Once you’re confident that you have a working method in place, starting a company, securing funding etc becomes a lot easier.