 Several weeks ago, the supermarket giant Tesco had announced that it was selling off portions of their business and looking for a buyer, in addition to closing some of their business abroad. This didn't come as a surprise to many retailers, however, it was the penultimate signal of the downfall of a British institution to many around the world, along with other global supermarkets that are facing a similar fate. The Hypermarket was a concept derived from the roots of the Walmart Era into the contemporary generation, in which a consumer could shop at a supermarket that also sold many other goods, such as clothes, toys and electronics. Walmart's founder, Sam Walton, was born in the Depression Era, and grew up during a time when many shops often were out of stock of popular items, and customers had to wait for days to weeks before new inventory was available. He founded Walmart on the philosophy that they would always be in stock of every item they sold in their store, neatly arranged into large isles; what the modern supermarket is today.  Tesco was, for many generations, that iconic supermarket in the UK, having numerous gigantic shops, in addition to many multi mini-marts, often in the same neighbourhood. However, with the controversy of their Oxfordshire hypermarket before it even opened, and with another 43 Tesco supermarkets set to close, a definite change was occurring along the ranks of the supermarkets, and the Goliath of supermarkets was being taken down by smaller specialty markets, and with the internet generation rapidly multiplying, to the growing public consciousness about organic food, and the rise of direct-to-client local farms that delivered their organic goodness right to people's homes, global supermarkets around the world were facing an economic challenge, and so started the changing of the guard. However, this change didn't occur overnight, Whole Foods Market was founded in 1980 by John Mackey, the controversial entrepreneur who brought the concept of organic food to the wider US Market, and Bread & Circus (which was later acquired by Whole Foods) was founded in 1975. Renée Elliott, the US-born, UK-based entrepreneur, was one of the pioneers who brought that concept into the UK. She founded Planet Organic in 1995, and at a time when the majority of people in the UK were shopping at Sainsbury's and Tescos, opened an organic food market right in the heart of London in Westbourne Grove.  Renée Elliott, Founder of Planet Organic I had a chance to talk to the iconic Founder a week ago, who also often speaks at The Guardian Masterclasses, has spoken at London School of Economics on women entrepreneurs and who recently spoke in Lisbon on social entrepeneurship in a conference organised by INSEAD last week. Renée told me that during those first few months when Planet Organic had opened that barely anyone came into the shop and she thought she was going under. It had been a testament to her faith and mindset, and convinced with certainty that this was what she wanted to do, it was a blow to faced with failure. However, in February 1996, the mad cow disease overtook the UK, and with the marketing of her organic beef at an opportune time, people started to flock into her shop, and in the first year, they generated a revenue of £1.2 million, then the second year, they doubled their revenue to £2.4 million. The trials and tribulations didn't end there. Although her start-up was taking off, she went through a 15-month legal battle as her business partner tried to push her out of the company. She also recalled that when they had initially been in the fundraising stage of her startup, she would have meetings with financial institutions and banks, and although she was the one who had all the numbers, figures, budgets and projections laid out, men would immediately defer to her male business partner to explain those figures. She gives me a wry, charming smile, as she told me about their surprised expressions, "I would tell them that I would be the one explaining the figures." After winning her legal battle, she ran the company with her husband Brian for ten years and in 2009 the company appointed a CEO to run the management part of her company so that she could focus on raising her family. "I realised that I had to make a decision- either run my company, and have someone else raise my children, or I could appoint someone to run my company so that I could raise my children. It was a tough decision." In the end, she chose to do the best of both worlds and embarked on an adventure to Italy for a few years before coming back to the UK. "Life is too short not to do what you love," Renée tells me. As founder, Renée is still an integral part of the Planet Organic brand, is involved in product development, their private label, training new employees, Founder inductions and public speaking. She also remains on the Board of Directors for Planet Organic.  Renée is also the author of two books, Me, You and the Kids Too; Healthy Eating for your Baby and Toddler. What makes Planet Organic different from other supermarkets is that they work directly with local farmers to deliver organic boxes to customers, in addition to working closely with their suppliers. At a time when all other supermarkets are alienating their suppliers with extremely high costs of presentation of their products in their shops, Planet Organic works with the founders of small labels, to help them with product development early on. "We like work with founders of new brands very early on, and help them develop their products and brands so that they can sell to organic markets. We're creating an ecosystem of suppliers by developing close relationships with them."  Box full of veggies from the award-winning Riverford Organic Farms, founded in 1987 by Guy Watson in Devon, UK I asked what Renée thought about the competition and the rise of specialty markets like Veganz in Germany and the award-winning Riverford Organic Farms, based in the UK, that has a direct-to-customer base, and delivers approximately 47K boxes per week utilising the franchise model, and even La Ruche Qui Dit Oui, a French-based direct-to-customer organic food market that just raised $9 million in Series B funding lead by UK's Felix Capital and the US-based Union Square Ventures two weeks ago.
"The more, the merrier. My intention with Planet Organic was to spread a philosophy of healthy eating, to raise awareness about organic food and good nutrition. I think these other companies with a similar philosophy are part of that vision. As a retailer, we have to be innovative. Many companies can start to copy certain things that we do- for instance, when we got a juice bar, many other supermarkets started to integrate a juice bar as well. We have to constantly be innovative in order to compete in the market, but I embrace the competition. Competition makes you sharpen your game, but my vision always had a broader and deeper intention than simply being a retailer of organic goods." Renée tells me that originally there was a lot of resistance to that vision. Although her long-time shareholders have been with her for a long time since they joined the company, they didn't initially believe in the concept and had wanted to change it because "they didn't get it". Her shareholders finally came around, but she gives me a bit of advice that it is time-wasting to argue with shareholders, as well as being emotionally draining. "Just do what you do and surround yourself with people who believe in you, who understand and is excited about your company and vision from the onset." By Sierra Choi, Director of Marketing
0 Comments
 Two boys in Brasil in 2009, banding together to save a dog from an uncertain fate In 2006, I was a year out of grad school, and was suddenly put in the position of managing an educational institution. Two years before, my parents had decided to construct a commercial building in South Korea, and on the top floor was an educational instution they wanted to launch. It was my first experience at what essential was, a startup. I had 7-9 employees working for me, most of whom were all older than myself. During my reign as CEO, I increased revenue by over 4000%; we initially had 3 students, then we grew to over 180, near maximum capacity. However it was a job that I didn't really want to do, and at the time, had no interest in. After a year, I thought my work was done, I could leave and things would be fine. I was wrong. Despite the fact that I had increased revenue into profitability, in retrospect, I hadn't been such a great manager. I created a climate of fear; my first few months there, I went on a firing spree, and most of the employees, were most likely, afraid of me. I fired a lot of people without any feedback and notice. I possessed a lot of book learning, and I had read a lot of different management books with no management experience, and I was influenced by American thinkers that adhere to a policy of quickly weeding out insurgents, and that was what I intended to do. Looking back, this was the kind of mentality of corporate America, especially in investment banking, when there is a big show of firing people, but in the startup world, this doesn't create a productive climate of entrepreneurship. I meet a lot of entrepreneurs who say "corporate people just don't get it" and I agree, they don't. Looking back, I was a kid who was focused on creating a profitable business, but not taking time to nurture the talent that was there, and which I learned later, employees are the single largest assets in any organisation.  Back in 2006, when I was thrown into this position of CEO, I didn't socialise with my colleagues, instead I asked them to write weekly reports so that I could keep track of everything they were doing. There were things I had learned in theory, however, in practice, there were unknown variables, and that is where I learned experience shapes instinct and intellect. After a year, I left to pursue my true interest: producing content for media and entertainment (ironically, I would come back to the startup world several years later, having tired of the entertainment industry), the company fell into disarray. With me gone, and no one with a vision to manage the other employees, things started to implode. What I failed to do was make each employee self-sufficient; I had been the one to make all the decisions before; however, my absence lead to confusion about what to do, from the most important to the most trivial of details. The educational institute that my parents founded was acquired in late 2011 and although some would say my tenure there had been a successful one- in terms of net income, I look back and think that I had failed to create a long term vision for the company- and in terms of giving incentive and motivation to the employees who had worked for me. Had I invested more time and effort into getting to know them, and finding out what their "one thing" was, I could've created a climate of self-agency instead one of fear. A few months ago, my mother told me she ran into one of my previous employees who now started her own educational institution, and I contacted her and asked her how things were going. She was stressed, managing a team of 3, and worked all around the hours, doing everything herself, and told me that it was much easier being an employee than trying to run her own business and was uncertain about how to progress from that point. It's always easier working for someone else than working for yourself because then the culpability is in someone else's hands, not yours. The second startup I worked at was as a business development executive for an EdTech company. I was at a point where I wanted to switch careers, from producing content for media and entertainment to a tech-related field, and didn't want to go through the MBA route. I had an opportunity to work for a startup, and I jumped at the chance; at this startup- the atmosphere was warm, welcoming, and there was a lot of creativity flowing from all angles. The group was very tight-knit and regularly went on work/holidays together, hiking together, camping together and there were a lot of work-dinners. The CEO of the startup was a very kind, understanding intellectual and really took time to give extensive feedback to every employee, and made sure every employee was heard and had designed an open space office, so that his desk was right where all the other employees had their desks, instead of being hidden away in the corner office. Unfortunately for the startup, it was nearing 3 years old, and at the end of its life expectancy and it desperately needed a CFO. At that point, the receptionist was doing all the accounting, and the CEO himself was writing 40 page tomes for the slide deck, and I was primarily there to source external investors to become interested in the company. Although many VC groups were initially interested in the startup (I was able to garner interest from VCs in Hong Kong, the US, UK and Switzerland) after they took a look at our dire financial situation, it would be enough to stop the conversation. We had all the talent and expertise, but we were missing the CFO.  Although the EdTech startup had great morale, these problems continued to emerge, especially cash flow issues and user retention of its apps, lack of revenue model, and when the startup had to finally disband- as the company was entirely funded by the CEO's business loans, all the employees banded together to create videos of their time together and there were a lot of teary goodbyes at the farewell party. Fortunately, all the founders of the startup went on to start their own projects and founded other companies, however, my experience there really taught me a lot about the importance of company morale, and creating an environment where people aren't afraid to make mistakes, and giving them lots of opportunity for feedback and suggestions for improvement. This didn't necessarily translate into a profitable business- however, I think it really shows the difference between the corporate mentality vs. the startup mentality. Startups are more like groups of small families, where each role is always changing; whereas the previous model of capitalism, based on Corporate America in the 1980s, is a dying breed of people who bought into that "greed is good" pre-2008 rhetoric of short-term profit over long-term investment, and long-term investment is always about the people, not the products or the services or the ideas; without employees, it's akin to being a leader without any followers. At this second startup, I learned the importance of being a leader, and empowering others, and not simply being a manager.  Simon Sinek in his TedTalk: Why Great Leaders Inspire Action When I meet with founders of startups, I always ask myself, would I want to work for him or her? as part of my initial assessment. 90% of startups fail simply because people give up. People give up when they hate where they work.
One of my duties at WhiteLake is sourcing new startups and finding new leads; one that I love doing, because as an extrovert, I love meeting new people and I never tire of talking with entrepreneurs and getting to understand their vision, their product or services, and hearing about their life story. Many startups are at the development and growth stage, however, I have found that nearly all the startups we talk to either outsource accounting and do not have a CFO and often do not consider the importance of having a CFO. Despite the fact that ideas, people, leadership are integral to the startup environment, a CFO is necessary to create the revenue model, and raise funds, and keep the investors happy. If a CEO spends time doing these things, then she/he will burn out quickly. CEO Founders are the trailblazers, they are the motivators who keep the company going and envision new ways of implementing company objectives. CFOs make sure the company is financially sound and can deal with investors because CFOs speak the language they understand. This isn't saying that a CEO Founder or even a COO Founder at a startup can't also act as the CFO- but, there are enough stresses in life, and not enough time in the day. That is why at WhiteLake we have created a virtual CFO services model, so that CEOs can relax and do what they love doing, whilst our team handles all the financial details, and the time-consuming tasks of dealing with investors, angels, VCs, accounting, due diligence, negotiating debt, financial modeling, revenue model generation, raising capital et al. In an ideal world, we would have time to do everything we wanted in a day, but let's face it, we probably don't, and there needs to be time allotted to cultivate your outside interests as well, a time to relax and simply focus on your own needs. Mens sana in corpore sano. By Sierra Choi Director of Marketing  For those of you who know me well, you will know that I'm a MAC girl. Despite the surge of Android products and devices (I previously had the first generation Android Motorola when it first was launched on the market), I vastly prefer iOS devices over Android for a variety of reasons. Although I have utilised Windows and Linux computers and devices before, I prefer iOS because the applications on iOS are compatible across a range of applications and versions, in addition to iOS devices possessing a superior sound and image quality, which as an audiovisual thinker, I find far more important than being able to hack more easily across Windows and Android OS. Of course, there is also a lot of criticism about Apple products as well; being a closed OS, updates that slow down previous versions of iOS, incompatibility of power cords from previous versions of Apple products, between different devices etc. However, Apple has certain customer buying patterns that have been consistent over a period of years.  Looking at the yearly Apple chart, one can see that there has been a huge uptrend over a period of years with extreme volatility between Dec 2012 and Dec 2013. I would extrapolate that no one who bought Apple shares after 2009 would be in the mindset to dump their shares now, looking at this 1000%+ uptrend. But what about those people who would like to get in on the Apple play in the future? A few years ago, I had a 250+% ROI on Apple option plays alone, when I was more vigilant about watching the US stock market. Generally I think people who day trade are wasting their time and perhaps even their sanity, and I prefer a more laid back approach to investment by buying at opportune times when it is at the bottom of the trend line and near the end of consolidation, when there are visible signals of an impending uptrend. I don't short Apple or any other stocks in general, because that sets up a negative mindset- hoping a company or stock will fail. (Although as a note, I have shorted commodities before, such as Gold, when it was at its height in 2011 and had a nice short play over a course of weeks when it hit my target and I had a 150+% return). Generally though, I prefer to focus on stocks I like and companies I believe in and only dump my shares when it has peaked or hovering across the top of the trend line. I align myself more with Warren Buffet long-term strategies however, and like to buy and hold; however options has a time limit, so most of my trades were in the realm of 1-3 months long. (For the record though, this is my philosophy, and I'm not an accredited stock broker, so this doesn't constitute as any kind of stock advice, but merely for the purpose of self-education).  Currently in my analysis, Apple (in the weekly chart) looks to be hovering at the top of the trend line and is most likely due for a pullback. It is currently making a similar pattern to APRIL 2012-JULY 2012 and likewise, hovering and testing the 161.8% fibonacci retracement line.  Looking at the hourly chart, I would extrapolate that if it doesn't hold 133.02 over the next couple of weeks, then I would watch to see if there is a pullback towards the 110-120 area, and would think about buying around May 2018-Oct 2018 when it might potentially be near the secondary support line at 100.65-115.77.
Simply, Apple is a great stock and one of my favourite companies. I like Google products as well, and I think Android is also great, but I just prefer Apple. It's a bit like one of those things of personal taste and preference, I prefer rainy weather to sunshine. Let it rain. By Sierra Choi, Director of Marketing (Disclaimer: This does not constitute as stock advice, and is for educational purposes only)   So this week is London Technology Week, a week long celebration of London’s status as Europe’s tech hub and of course, I will be participating. However, given the sheer scale - 200 events spread out over the Capital, the laws of physics dictate that I will only be participating in smattering of events. The size and scale of the event highlight how important technology has become to London’s economy, the E&Y study released this week indicates that over 200,000 people, contributing over £18 billion to the economy are employed in sector in London alone.
The diversity of the event (from smart cities to user interface design), the range of industries it touches upon (bio-tech to fashion and everything in between) and the sheer number of participants (tens of thousands) cement London’s reputation as a leading incubator of technology. As part of the event, a new portal was launched, Tech.London. It aims to be a one stop shop to connect and keep up on the London technology scene; news, blogs, jobs and more. I encourage you to check it out and say hello if you happen to see me around. I always enjoy talking to new startups. By Ashok Parekh, Director of Investment Services  Lost My Name (www.lostmy.name) a London-based children's book startup From personalised gifts, to personalised service to personalised meals, we live in an spectacular era of personalisation. Nosto is an interesting startup that raised £2 million a couple years ago to open offices in London that is based on specialised e-Commerce, to personalise the online shopping experience. I was searching online for a children's book for my cousin's daughter, who is turning three, when I found this London-based personalised children's book startup called Lost My Name.  Ah, I would've loved these books as a kid! I previewed one of the books using my name. The elegant UI interface makes it easy to see what the actual product would look like. Although there are many personalised children's books out there, such as the US-based I See Me! Inc. which was founded in 2000 by a couple who left their jobs at General Mills to start designing and publishing personalised children's books, I found that the quality of the writing and stories were far better in Lost My Name, although currently they only have two book offerings along with the much more preferable free international delivery. In comparison, I See Me! (which was recently acquired by the McEvoy Group last year) has a much larger selection, with personalised hardback editions, insertion of children's own photos inside the books, in addition to having celebrity endorsements for their books; however, their graphics and story writing I found a bit too simplistic (set in duple metre rhymes) or just plainly inappropriate:  A book from I See Me! Inc. (www.iseeme.com). I wasn't too impressed with the content nor the storytelling.  Lost My Name's fun graphic design and imaginative, storytelling prose that veers away from the boring duple metre prose and heavy "princess" content of other children's prose books In addition, the delivery fee often doubled the actual cost of the book itself. In the end, I decided to send the Lost My Name book to my cousin's daughter. I found the superb graphics, the writing and the story much more amenable to a growing, imaginative mind than the mindless princess tales and simplistic writing style of the I See Me! books. In fact, Katy Wright from Lost My Name writes in their blog that they are gender agnostic. This is in line with Virginia Woolf's writings in A Room of One's Own that she believes having an androgynous mind is far superior for development of creativity and intellect. From a consumer point-of-view, I prefer the Lost My Name books, simply based on the content. Analysing Lost My Name from a business perspective, they do face some substantial competition from more established companies who are offering similar personalisation of children's books, but of course, it all depends on the content and potential development of an accompanying mobile application. With its hefty international delivery fees, I could see that I See Me! and other clone companies would have a harder time reaching audiences in Asia Pacific and India, whereas, Lost My Name, if the startup develops more titles, would be more adaptable towards the Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and South Korean demographic, countries that are known for spending more capita per child on personalised educational products and services than its US counterpart.  I would like to see Lost My Name create a new era of personalised books that break old models of gender roles, and instigate creativity in both girls and boys through an androgynous voice, perhaps even stimulate the minds of girls to become entrepreneurs instead of princesses.
By Sierra Choi, Director of Marketing  Michael Green, Founder of CaseHub Last week, I had a chance to talk to Michael Green, Founder of CaseHub, a crowdsourcing class action legal startup that is certain to make waves in the legal sector by disruption of the status quo. He has just finished raising his seed and about to launch this summer. CaseHub is essentially a startup that will test the theory of democritisation of the UK legal sector by building class action lawsuits. "At present," Michael tells me, "people affected by (low-value) harmful practices that affect millions of people rarely take the issue to court. There is a time, knowledge and cost barrier for one person alone to fight it out, and no clear co-ordination mechanism to make the process more efficient. Also, the courts involved in lower-value cases don't set precedent, so companies can continue lurking in the legal grey areas forever. Finally, it is rare for a regulator to get people compensated: after a crisis hits the media, they tend to look to how to improve things for the future." CaseHub will crowdsource lawsuits so that the population of the UK's working class, precariats and the technical middle class will have a voice in litigation which previously would've been unavailable to them due to a lack of financial resources. The cases will also be run in courts that can set precedent, getting the law clarified in the process. Michael's potentially disruptive startup, CaseHub, will address wide, systemic issues (rather than one-off accidents, sometimes pejoratively labelled 'ambulance chasing'). However, Michael doesn't necessarily see his startup as being entirely disruptive as much as it is offering a much-needed service for large groups people who have previously been ignored by politicians. There is also an aspect of job creation; by building class actions, CaseHub acts as a lead generator for lawsuits that have hitherto been untested: creating more work for law firms and barristers. I mentioned to Michael that in the US that lawyers have a high rate of unemployment due to saturation in the market. (As a side note: according to this article, out of 1 million lawyers in the US, only 3% of them are employed.) Michael, himself, is a fascinating, iconic figure of a Founder. He had previously developed online games, reaching millions of people across the web and later graduated from University of Cambridge with two first class degrees in law. He was also recently featured in the Economist just a few months ago. Michael Green's CaseHub presentation at Entrepreneur First 2015 Demo Day  Although, I've always been sceptical of the cult of the young entrepreneur, after speaking with Michael, as a 22 year old, he seems quite sanguine and has the aura of a contemporary Alexander Hamilton, with a very particular vision of how the legal system will change in the UK and beyond. My bet is that CaseHub will be one of the first startups to disrupt a sector that has long been in need of being disrupted: the outdated, cumbersome, legal sector.
By Sierra Choi, Director of Marketing BuildTech…oh no, another one of my technology acronyms. Well, yes, I am attending the Canada Green Building Conference in beautiful Vancouver BC. The building I am writing this from Vancouver Convention Centre, was the first convention centre in the world to earn a LEED platinum rating, among its features there is a six acre “living roof” houses thousands of indigenous species and recovers rainwater for irrigation and brown water treatment and even a fish habitat built into its foundations.
The so-called Green Building revolution is being pushed along by the recognition that the built environment plays a huge role in our carbon foot print and energy use and as the world increasingly urbanizes the impact is magnified. Secondly, the building environment is a highly regulated sector (think building codes, planning permissions and the like) so, it is an area that governments (through regulations) can force outcomes. Is “Green Building” a form of CleanTech? In one way, yes; but, in other I would argue it’s a more holistic approach to a product design to achieve certain outcomes. Some green building ideas, are decidedly low tech such as orientation of buildings to minimize solar gain. The Masdar City project in Abu Dhabi is a great of example of how some very old fashioned Arab city design (narrow streets for solar shading, orientation to create natural breezes, etc.) are being integrated with the high technology to create a vision of the cities of the future. [Full disclosure: We at the White Lake Group have been involved with the broader MASDAR initiative for many years and were instrumental in the Masdar Clean Tech Fund] However, technology does play a part in both new buildings going up and the retrofit of existing structures. So the question of adoption arises - one that we often talk about with technology companies. In this case, how do you drive new technology adoption into the construction and facilities management business which is fairly conservative, notoriously risk averse and that where the end clients are usually highly cost sensitive? One of the companies I met here, Radiance Energy has an interesting approach. They design whole building intelligent LED lighting solutions. What is novel in that, one might ask? LED lighting has been around for awhile and could now even be considered a mature technology. I think there are three things that are interesting in their business approach. Firstly, the Radiance’s IP is tied up with the whole systems integration – they rely largely on parts that others parties have spent significant sums developing. Secondly, while some of the LEDs, motion sensors and are other lighting component, are mature off the shelf components, they do incorporate numerous leading edge and even bleeding edge components into their solutions (but the end user doesn’t even know). Lastly and most importantly, they sell a total solution to the customer (facilities management and construction mangers) that is solely built around 1) a lighting solution and 2) ROI – in a language the customer already speaks. They are not trying to talk to the end user customer in terms of “please try a new technology.” Depending upon the installation, payback period can be as short as 4 months and for longer term paybacks the company can put together financing solution that involves no capital outlay but immediate cost savings. This company struggled to get traction in the market and have found that changing the whole nature of the conversation with their customers has completely changed the velocity of their business. By Ashok Parekh, Director of Investment Services  Over the past few weeks I’ve been considering if I were a young executive just out of University – would I be better working at a start-up with other young people or working with older, more experienced folks in a larger organisation? Which would benefit my career and well-being day-to-day the most?
The conclusion I have come to is this: I would be better working with older, experienced people at a start-up. A lot depends as well on what function you are working in – Sales & Marketing, Product Development, Finance and Operations. I think mainly in Finance, Operations and Sales. There are a lot of start-ups in London now – and all are not created equal. I’ve seen some fantastic ones and some misguided ones with the business model having some clear flaws. My concern on these ones was (I was in an empathetic type mood!) – the reality is some of these firms are bound to fail; however, will the execs who are left afterwards be better or worse for the experience? Of course, at this point it is easy go down the route of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” “they will have gained great all-round experience at a start-up” etc. Frankly, this is fanciful thinking. To get valid experience you need to be IN business (i.e., making actual sales, working with clients, dealing with contracts, project managing product development etc.) If a start-up is limping along without serious traction and surviving hand-to-mouth, chances are most of the top execs are spending the majority of time fundraising from angels. This is not something you should be doing long-term. It’s soul destroying. On the flipside, if you are doing well – a start-up will be wonderful – good morale, cross-functional experience and opportunity for huge earnings with your equity. So the morale of the story – an employee must vet a start-up like an angel or VC fund does, but go a step further. Look at where you are in your career and your skill set, and at the people in the organisation. Are they really top executives who can execute and whom you can learn from? If they are – even if it fails, you will have learned a lot. The pillars of any business exec (Sales, Biz Dev, Finance, Operations) are simple things for me:
As I well know from personal experience - these are areas which need to be constantly improved upon and if you are not improving – then, you are becoming stagnant, and you need to challenge yourself by moving on in other ways. By John Rowland, Managing Partner  I consider myself very lucky that I grew up in one of the most liberal parts of the US: California. It wasn't really until I went to Columbia University that I encountered "sexism" for the very first time in my life. I recall one of my tenured professors, saying in the first week of courses that "women were bad writers" and that "men always wrote better essays". Of course, we were all collectively shocked to hear such politically incorrect words uttered, but all the women in the my class kept silent, and a few nervously giggled. We were a bunch of teenagers who needed this tenured Professor's approval. He had all the power, he was going to grade us- give us the final judgement on whether our writing was good or bad. Suffice to say, I spent the rest of the semester disagreeing with everything he would say in class out of youthful rebellion. When he put forth a statement, I would be the first to raise my hand. Yes, I was one of "those" students, and in a class where everyone got B's, I was the only one who received a C. For those of you who aren't aware, no one gets "C"s at an ivy league university. It is practically unheard of. "C"s are reserved for students who never attend class, or those bad seeds who disrupt the class with "controversial" opinions (I.E., disagree with the Professor's opinions). However, I had so many other great Professors at Columbia that I can't say that this one particular one had any effect on my educational experience. For every as*hole out there, there are even better people who will support you and I had plenty of encouraging, engaging Professors who probably influenced me to be better thinker and person. However, my experience at UCL was the first time I had experienced complete freedom of expression and ways of developing critical thinking processes. The UK is inherently suspicious of consensus and sycophancy; just my kind of nation. A critical discourse is necessary to keep one in check of his/her own beliefs. We can all fall blind to consensus and it would be the blind leading the blind. If the global world at large converted to England's system of education, it would be all for the better.  The other memorable time I encountered sexism was a funny incident in South Korea, when I, along with two of my colleagues, were chosen to represent our company at a much publicised KOCCA/ KOEIC investment event. When we arrived to present our proposal, I walked into a crowded room full of men. I was the only woman there presenting. The only other woman sat around a table full of investors, all men in suits who looked as if they hadn't slept for several weeks. Curiously, there had only been two chairs for the presenting team, and I prompty told the male co-ordinator that we needed another chair for my team. He pointed me to the back of the room and told me to sit there. I was a little taken aback, who does he think I am? The assistant? I thought of telling him off, but then I remembered Sheryl Sandberg's TedTalk, and that "Women have to sit at the table." And I did what probably no other woman or man had done at that institution; I went to the back of the room, picked up the empty chair, and proceeded to move to the front of the table, and sat there, presenting with my group. No one noticed that I had to get my own chair or perhaps they chose not to notice. There were hundreds of groups presenting, and the investors around the table didn't even look up. We were probably the 50th group they saw that day, and they were mainly busy typing into their laptops without blinking an eye. Sexism occurs everywhere, just as racism, elitism, et al. I think that is why it is important to surround oneself with positive, supportive people. We are the average of the ten people with whom we spend the most time with, and when people find the right people to work with, it becomes an enjoyable, learning environment. Here are my simple rules for avoiding sexual harassment in the workplace: 1. Don't work for as*holes, work with people whom you respect and can learn from 2. Don't get into any romantic relationships with people you work with 3. Get to know your Co-Workers as people, not just Co-Workers 4. Don't try to act like a "man"; be comfortable being a woman 5. If someone gives you a compliment, accept it graciously 6. Learn what motivates people, find out what their "one thing" is 7. Have a clear, direct communication style, don't shy away from confrontation 8. Don't be afraid to occasionally poke fun at your colleagues 9. Have your office doors open most of the time. This might seem trivial, but a lot of studies corroborate that people become paranoid when they are separated from the rest of their colleagues 10. Don't be afraid to voice your opinions and offer solutions; most people know how to complain, very few people offer solutions to the problem I remember the first time I worked at an equity firm. After my successful interview, the manager pulled me aside and was concerned that I wouldn't fit into the office culture filled with all males. He said they often told sexist jokes, and that I might be offended. I told him that I had no problem working with all men- rather I think it's more important not to work for an as*hole. My manager was a kind soul, who was generous with his time and supportive of the entire staff, and I went into the job with enthusiasm. Despite the office being all men, and there had been a rather salacious calendar hanging up one of the walls, we would all refer to each other by our surnames and call out witty insults to each other during the day. Here, my blunt sense of humour didn't offend anyone and poking fun at co-workers wasn't interpreted to have any malicious intent. We would often spend a lot of our time socialising as well- going to happy hour, and generally chatting about various things. On Fridays, we would all bring our own alcohol, and make drinks for people after the working day was over. Our freezer was permanently stacked with vodka and gin. Suffice to say, it was one of the most fun working environments I had been in, simply because we all got to know each other as people, not just Co-Workers. My being hired lead to more women being hired, and soon I wasn't the only woman there anymore. However, those halcyon days ended abruptly when the Founder of the company (whom I saw only once) suddenly departed and he was wanted by the FBI for tax evasion. Although the firm dismantled rather quickly, and all my Co-Workers collectively went into shock, we kept each other updated with our activities, and more than half found positions at other financial institutions. These kinds of experiences keep us humble. It's been said that the average Millenial will change jobs 20 times in his or her life and live in more than 20 cities. In a similar vein, startups have a short life expectancy. More than 90% fail, and it really isn't for people with thin skins. There will be a lot of setbacks and disappointments, just as in life, so it is important to surround yourself with a support group.  Out of curiosity, I decided to look up the Ellen Pao vs. Kleiner Perkins lawsuit. In summary, it read like a sordid novel: Female lead had an affair with another Junior Associate, she ended the affair, and he started to leave her off important emails and meetings. Certainly there should be something reprehensible about that sort of closed-off communication style. However, there were some other questionable allegations as well: a Senior Partner gave her "a book with sexual drawings". I looked up this book- The Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen, and it seemed to me a book about Zen Buddhism, hardly indicative of sexual harassment. Ellen Pao also alleges that the same Senior Partner asked her out to dinner. Well, lots of co-workers often go to dinner, male or female, it's not an unusual occurrence; people socialise outside the workplace. Also, if she didn't want to go, she could've just said, "No, thanks." Instead, she took it a step further and complained to management that she was asked to go out to dinner and was given a book as a gift. In my opinion, being asked out to dinner and being given a book doesn't imply sexual harassment. I recall another instance (not related) in which I was following an online thread of a woman who found it "creepy" that some guy at her company sent her flowers. Then she proceeded to vilify him and avoided communication with him at every opportunity. Look, if a man you're not interested in sends you flowers, and you also happen to work with him, then the most rational thing to do is to have a talk with the guy and let him know his kind gestures were appreciated but that you're not interested in him romantically. Isn't that what sane people do? Instead this woman was going around internet forums screaming sexual harassment, and more scary still, other people were agreeing with her and saying his behaviour was "creepy." I think sexual harassment is not something to be taken lightly, but I wonder if women are quick to call anything sexual harassment because they see themselves as victims to some imagined situation, rather than take charge of their actions and have a clear communication style? That is not to say I don't think Ellen Pao's sexual harrassment case is important, but perhaps she is better off starting her own Digital Tech Fund instead of prolonging this era of unending litigation? If anything, her portraying herself as a victim will further perpetuate the belief that women are "victims" in the workplace, when perhaps certain injustices can be amended with clear, human communication. Perhaps Silicon Valley's real discrimination is towards people with liberal arts degrees rather than women, in general. After all, when you have a room full of introverted nerds and lawyers, there are bound to be miscommunications on every level. By Sierra Choi, Director of Marketing  Last week I was speaking to one of our Investment Clients on what they wish to invest in tech wise and they said simply, “find us companies that fit the criteria from the book Exponential Organisations – why new organisations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours”? So I decided I’d better read it! A summary of Exponential Organisations – The Book The basic is premise is that a new era has arrived – the era where “Information is the new currency”. In this era any business which does not take into account trends in big data, asset light business models taking advantage of unused capacity and who do not try and disrupt themselves after they have matured will not be safe. Who could have foreseen that Uber would dominate the taxi sector in a matter of months or that AirBNB would take such a hold in the accommodation sector, or that Spotify and Apple decimate the music sales sector and that telecom giants are in danger of becoming mere commodity? Any product which can be integrated into a smart phone will – maps, music, TV cameras, guitar tuners and metronomes (my latest apps!) and more. Whereas before, a firm would spend months and maybe years designing a product and then build in a typical waterfall software development system (Requirements -> Design -> Build -> Test -> Maintenance) now we have MVP (Minimum Viable Product), Agile development - meaning products get to market much faster and iterate more quickly to the end result. With excess capacity in the production area (I.E., foundries for semi-conductors) and the cheap production hub which is China – huge capex is not needed to form new products. Production sites, which utilise Techshop and software services such as AWS/ Github, mean firms do not need to invest in overheads like before and can share resource. In previous models, firms achieved linear growth – a % on the previous year - now exponential growth is possible – the doubling pattern present in Moore’s Law is now working with companies enabled by information. Doubling anything means it gets bigger extremely quickly once it passes a critical mass. The sharing economy is upon us and releasing under-utilised assets is key – leveraging assets not owning them. (E.G., Airbnb, Uber.) Rule 1: Firms need an MTP - Massive Transformative Purpose – (I.E., Google's “Organise the world’s information”) Then they need to use:
Inside the firm – the typical hierarchical structures do not work. Communication within the organisation is more important to be able to react to the market more quickly –Tools such as Yammer – information is sourced and used in the same place as opposed to travelling all the way to the top for decision making. We will look at Holacracy in detail in a future blog. We will also take a look at OKR (Objective and Key Results methodology) for start-ups versus typical KPI measuring. My favourite example of marginal cost and leveraging assets:   Hilton hotels vs. Airbnb: This is one of my favourite examples. For AirBnb to add 100 rooms, the marginal cost is essentially zero (100 new people go on the site and add their apartments) – whereas for Hilton Hotels to build a 100 room hotel costs £XXXXXX. What a difference?!?!! And all information technology enabled – matching underutilised assets to demand. Hence value created per employee in Airbnb is >10x more than an employee in Hilton hotels. The same ratios works for ROI (however don’t be fooled – that’s ROI on invested capital - not returns if you buy a share – Hilton may offer better value depending on valuation).
Overarching theme: Corporations that do not try to disrupt themselves will be disrupted by smaller, more agile, more innovative start-ups. A firm that has disrupted itself successfully is Apple (iPhone replaces iPod). My critique: Some businesses need to be asset heavy and require long term investment – everyone cannot share resource if someone does not take a long view and build the capacity (I.E., aluminum smelters) – taking a long-term bet of huge capex on old fashioned supply/ demand and energy prices. So old fashioned business has not gone away. So Exponential Organisations – worth having a read. Some stuff is pretty obvious however there are some nice ideas in there that they flesh out. The link from Moore’s Law to organisation growth in general is tenuous - until you look at Airbnb and Uber. We can’t all invent and run Exponential Organisations – I still appreciate small businesses owners who make a decent living in their own community. By John Rowland, Managing Partner |
CONTRIBUTORS
Archives
June 2022
Categories |
RSS Feed