One of the best talks about entrepreneurship and business models i’ve ever heard.
Key thoughts:
- Charge money (WHO would have thought of that!!!)
- Provide great service (if you order shoes at 10pm and they are delivered the next morning, you’ll use this service again → Zappos)
- Be a decent italian restaurant. You don’t need to be the best freaking restaurant on the planet! → it’s enough to attract a few thousand customers; you don’t neet to attract 7 billion!
- Forget the billion dollar bullshit. The startup community is being brainwashed through repeated broadcasting of the stories of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter etc. It’s better to have 1m than -10k on your bank account. Going for the billion is pretty much suicide for first time entrepreneurs. You can worry about the billion once you have the million (and maybe you’ll realize that the million is all you need).
- The B2B market is easier than the B2C market → Adress Fortune 5.000.000 instead of Fortune 500
- Use the ideas of the 4 Hour Work Week. Forget 14 hour days. It’s impossible to be productive for 14 hours straight. Most people aren’t even really productive for 3 hours a day. Why not only work 4 days a week for 8 hours a day?
- Take it easy! Stop hurrying! You can’t build a company over night. It takes years — and that’s completely okay, because there is ENOUGH time — stop thinking the window of opportunities is open for only a few months! There are ALWAYS enough opportunities, even if you sell SHOES!