Notes - BOLD
In 1920s, the average lifespan of an S&P 500 company was 67 years. In the 21th century, the average is 15 years. Imagine that 10 years from now, 40% of today’s top companies will probably no longer exist.
The Instagram story: valued at 25m$ 16 months after its creation, and later bought for 1b$ by Facebook (when it had only 13 employees still).
What’s in the way of inventing? Financing, engineering, distribution & legalities.
Entrepreneurs should take advantage of crowdsourcing.
The AirBnB story: the company is valued at 10b$ and doesn’t own a single hotel! Versus Hyatt Hotels Corporation valued at 8.4b$.
Linear organizations are at risk from the 6 D’s:
Digitalize - a product of process moves from physical to digital.
Deceptive - early changes seem slow or irrelevant so it’s ignored (example of the digital camera).
Disruptive - growth accelerates and the digital version outperforms or replaces traditional solutions.
Demonetize - the value chain starts loosing money (example of the cost of long-distance calls with the Internet).
Dematerialize - physical objects are replaced by digital (example of the phone that is your camera, calendar, GPS, notebook).
Democratize - once-exclusive tools or services become accessible to everyone (AI, education).
Vision is key = the ability to see ahead.
A company will always fail if it rests on its laurels.
The 3D printer story: you can print straight from your computer a product start to finish (design, print) and you remove all intermediaries that were once needed.
Note: it costs millions to deliver in space, imagine if we could directly print what we need in space?
Note: with 3D printing the only real cost that stays is for the materials, the plastic. Imagine if you find a way to melt and recycle the tons of plastic you have at home and discard as trash?
A good philosophy is to think about how to make things simpler to use = let the user think of what he wants to do, not how to do it (remove obstacles to creation).
IoT potential:
Hackers are using increasingly inexpensive sensors and open source hardware (example of Arduino controller, Raspberry Pi). Think of the evolution of war too, with the heavy reliance on cheap drones instead of multi-millions military equipment.
When we will get to autonomous cars it means millions of IoT devices will scan the roads all the time. Can be huge for Police.
It’s a gigantic mountain of information that devices collect and making use of this information is a challenge.
For insurance companies? Access to sensors in your car, on your watch, in your home, of your gym equipment, behavior tracking…
With computer power being more easily available you can use brute force to crack passwords but also to design (simulation of billions of shapes of car to find the best aerodynamic one).
Note: the book predicts that AI will be better than humans in every domain by 2029 - only a few more years to check the claim ;)
Half of American jobs are at risk of being taken over by computers (AI and robots).
Population keeps growing older and there will be a big market for robots/services to take care of elderly.
Tip for entrepreneurs: setting goals increase productivity by 11 to 25% (Latham and Locke)
“Fair early, fail often, fail forward”: you need to try a lot of ideas, decrease the time between tries and improve knowledge between each run. Rapid iteration is key.
Start only projects that can be measured (otherwise how do you know if it succeeds or fails?) and stop early in the process, don’t over invest resources. Fail early and move to the next project until one sticks.
For software it means: launch a version fast, take feedback into account and do updates with continuous iterations.
“If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched it too late” - Reid Hoffman founder of LinkedIn.
All projects have to be measurable and testable. Bold projects can get bold investments but they have to be measurable and show progress along the way in order to attract and keep investors (importance of the roadmap).
The “stick and carrot” approach is mostly inefficient, especially with money once one’s basic needs are met. You motivate employees with autonomy, mastery of their craft and purpose.
“Failure isn’t a badge of shame, it’s a rite of passage” - Eric Ries, the author of The Lean Startup.
8 rules from Google:
Focus on the user - if it doesn't help the user, it doesn't matter.
Share everything - open-source and transparency build trust and collaboration.
Look for ideas everywhere
Think big but start small -break big ambitions into scalable prototypes and quick wins that validate your direction.
Never fail to fail - failure is how you learn what works.
Spark with imagination but fuel with data
Be a platform - create tools and ecosystems, not just products: enables network effects and ecosystem growth.
Have a mission that matters - purpose attracts talent and drives resilience.
Note: the author insists on the importance of being in the flow - check other books on that subject.
Different sources of capital: seed capital, crowdsourced capital, angel capital, strategic partners, series A/B ventures, public offering.
The best way to predict the future is to create the future yourself - the future is mostly a result of the actions taken today.
The best predictor of future success is your past actions - the most important is to start now.
When given a choice, take both (study while working, create multiple companies,…it’s not always one or the other).
If you can’t win, change the rules. If you can’t change the rules, ignore them.
If it was easy, it would have been done already.
Having a goal doesn’t mean you’ll reach it, but not having a goal means that you’ll miss it 100%.
Elon’s story: in 2008 he had to borrow money from his parents to pay rent because he had spent everything to save Tesla from bankruptcy… and later successfully turned the odds around.
Always try to protect the downside: make bold moves but keep a way out if things go wrong.
Tip: ask yourself what won’t change in the coming 5 or 10 years? Because you can invest on it right now.
It’s often easier to make progress when you are really ambitious: since no one is willing to try, you don’t really have competition and you can get the best people on board because the smartest people want to work on something ambitious.
It’s never been a better time than now to start your own business: almost everything is free! Linux, MySQL, gmail,…
Crowdsourcing advantages: money, market validation and real demand measurement, development of a paying community of customers, people getting involved usually help promote the product to their entourage, cash-flow positive.
Crowdsourcing steps:
Set money target
Campaign lenght and schedule
Setting rewards/inventives and stretch goals
Building the perfect team
Telling a meaningful story
Creating a viral video
Building your audience (with the 3 A’s)
Affiliates, advocates, activists
Credible launch, early donator engagement and media outreach
Week-by-week execution plan
Data-driven decisions
“Give me 6 hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first 4 hours sharpening the ax” - reminds us that preparation is crucial.
Try to share your passion with other people. Sometimes people just want to connect and help for free because they want to do something useful and meaningful.
Reminder that:
The only constant is that everything changes
The rate of change is increasing
If you don’t disrupt your industry yourself, someone else will
Competition and disruption can come from anyone and from anywhere
How do I get the smartest people to work for me?
Harness the crowd to remain competitive
Every problem has a solution, and it’s easier than ever to find solutions with the tools we have. Embrace problems you discover because they are opportunities to solve.
The world’s biggest problems are also the world’s biggest business opportunities. These problems are modern day gold mines.
The coming age of exponential will put game changing technologies in the hands of everyone. While this will probably lead us down the road of abundance, it also has the potential to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few. To navigate the turbulent times ahead we will need a new breed of ethical leaders who are not corrupted by such absolute power.
We have now the power to solve the world’s grand challenges and create a world of abundance. This also means triumphing over age-old bad habits such as greed.