What companies need to become winners

A company needs 2 things to become a success:

Scale and governance

Governance you can get by putting skilled non-execs on your Board and by putting in proper reporting processes. Financial governance should be straightforward in an early stage business - there will probably be insufficient transactions to make an audit complex...but there still maybe skeletons to pull out !

Scale is hard to assess and harder to improve. The ability to scale is determined by a number of factors:

Size of the market opportunity

Quality of the management team

Clear and well defined (make that well understood as well!) strategy

Shared vision

Sales pipeline

Product quality

Customer satisfaction (happy reference customers - ideally flagships)

IP

Innovation

Culture

Competitive advantage

Funding (and quality of funding)

Some of these things are easy to change, some are hard to change and some are impossible to change...

Are zero gravity strategists just space cadets?

The whole idea (I think) is that you strategise without constraint. That you allow the most ideal circumstances to exist which promote creativity  - great stuff.

The trouble is that we live in the real world where profit and loss exists. Where lead times and resource constraints are part of daily life. Where existing tactical commitments cannot be 'walked away' from in an instant. Where money changes hands in exchange for goods and services.

I think it's bad to make strategic sacrifices for tactical reasons...BUT

Gravity exists for a reason. It keeps our feet on the ground.

What ever clever ideas we come up with - someone will have deploy them...

Must not forget that.

How long does an idea take - start to finish

I was speaking to Pilgrim Beart the other day - he is one of the founders of AlertMe.com

When people talk about serial entrepreneurs, I think it's Pilgrim they are talking about ! Boy, does he have ideas. He has created more products, businesses and entities that I could have believed.

We discussed how long it takes...from the time that you have a good idea, to the day the company (which you build to commercialise the idea) is sold. We agreed that from a cold start you're looking at about 10 years. Yep - it really is that long. So if you want to be a founder CEO and exploit your ideas one after the other, then you're looking at 2-3 good ideas in your working life...tops.

So next time you have a great idea and start thinking about all the Ferraris you're going to buy with the proceeds, think on a 10 year turnaround for the investment of your time and effort...

Now you can see why some founders hand the company to someone else to run while they work on another idea !

Been engrossed for a few months

Sorry I haven't posted much for a while.

My excuse is that I have been busy with life !

Oh - I am starting a management consultancy. I know I am a techy entrepreneur in my heart but I also really enjoy helping folks getting their companies 'across the chasm'.

I will sort out a mission statement when I have a moment of clarity.

CEO Tales

I went to a Business Leaders Network event in Cambridge yesterday. I have to say it was fascinating. The speaker was Joel Spolsky. What a smart guy...

What really struck me was:
1. He is uber clever
2. He is really clear about the vision for his company
3. He listens to the user base but is not their servant
4. He's nothing like the sort of CEO that some traditional UK VCs like

I'm CEO, bitch

I watched the ‘Social Network’ for the first time last night. I can’t believe Mark had ‘I’m CEO, bitch’ on his business card. Cool but maybe a bit lacking in maturity…

I must be the last person in the world to watch the movie. I had put it off because our company Chairman said that if you work in Lysanda you don’t need to watch the movie. I actually don’t think that is fair. Lysanda is nothing like facebook. I am nothing like Zuckerberg. He’s much brighter, younger and richer. He’s also male.

I guess that the ‘Social Network’ is going to be to digital entrepreneurs what ‘Wall Street’ was to City guys. We’ll be quoting the lines for years…

and I would never have that on my card....

About me

I was born in 1971 and spent much of my childhood in Dorset.  We lived close to the sea which was and still is a big part of my life as one of my passions, (which my Dad imprinted on me) is sailing.  I learned to sail when I was 7 (thanks Dad) and I have been doing it ever since.  I love racing too; I’m not amazingly good at it but certainly quick enough to give the boys a run for their money.

Another great passion of mine is supercars.  I started getting interested in cars when my Dad bought a Mini Cooper ‘S’ for my mother (I don’t think this was her first choice), in actual fact I think the idea was that the Cooper would be restored to its formal glory by my father’s own fair hands, with my rather smaller hands involved in a sort of supporting role!

At around 16 years old (yes, the troublesome age) I was faced with what every 16 year old is faced with – choosing A Levels that would enable me to go to College.  I desperately wanted to be a yacht designer but I didn’t like the subjects that I would have to take in order to get onto a course, so I spent the next 2 years pretending to study and surprise surprise, I got pretty poor results.  The college took pity on me and let me in any way to study Naval Architecture and to my complete amazement, was sponsored by the MOD.  I duly (after nights of liver abuse) graduated and wrote the MOD a ‘Dear John’.  Peace had broken out (end of the cold war) and so they took the answer pretty well.

Fast forward a few years of working for Ford and working as a consultant and I came up with a smart idea called the Eco-Log.  The result is the thrusting young successful business (Lysanda Ltd) that we see today. so what next...

You know, I used to have the odd idea now and then