Entries categorized as ‘inspiration’
Nice quote from Larry Ellison to sum up this torrid week,
“There are two kinds of people in business; people who build products and people who sell products. Figure out how you fit into one of these two camps, or you’re toast.”
- Larry Ellison quoted on Found+Read.
Now I know why my head hurts when I find myself dealing with issues that have very little or no relevance to staying on track. If you are in a startup, such issues are plenty and tempt you every day. The raw environment of a startup requires, nay begs that you simplify your thoughts and focus on quickly setting and meeting goals.
Even if you are in the services industry and have an entrepreneurial mindset, focus on either one of the two things. Take your product seriously. That is the only way you will survive a startup later on.
Categories: business · inspiration · quotes · startup · technology
Tagged: larry ellison, oracle, quotes
Happy New Year, I wish you a great 2008!
These pieces of art work are driving several out there to become Entrepreneurs.
Pink Floyd - the album Dark Side of the Moon.
Jerry Maguire the movie.
Anyone else would have left you by now, but I’m sticking with you. And if I have to ride your ass like Zorro, you’re gonna show me the money. - Rod Tidwell
The Key to this (any) business is personal relationships. - Dicky Fox
I’m finished, I’m f**ked. Twenty four hours ago, man, I was hot! Now… I’m a cautionary tale. You see this jacket I’m wearing, you like it? Because I don’t really need it. Because I’m cloaked in failure! I lost the number one draft picked the night before the draft! Why? Let’s recap: Because a hockey player’s kid made me feel like a superficial jerk. I ate two slices of bad pizza, went to bed and grew a concience! - Jerry Maguire
Railroad Tycoon II - a game by Gathering of Developers.
What are your influences?
Categories: business · inspiration · technology
Tagged: business, games, inspiration, jerry maguire, movies, railroad tycoon II, strategy
Costing is a Science.
Pricing is a policy.
- Long-time businessman, trader and friend.
Categories: business · inspiration · leisure · marketing · pricing
No matter who you are, an Entrepreneur or a Professional working somewhere, this quote has meaning for you.
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or gazelle - when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.
Anonymous
This one is for startups:
What you should fear, as a startup, is not the established players, but other startups you don’t know exist yet. They’re way more dangerous than Google because, like you, they’re cornered animals.
Looking just at existing competitors can give you a false sense of security. You should compete against what someone else could be doing, not just what you can see people doing. A corollary is that you shouldn’t relax just because you have no visible competitors yet. No matter what your idea, there’s someone else out there working on the same thing.
That’s the downside of it being easier to start a startup: more people are doing it.
~ Paul Graham on Startups
The conversion of fear into meaningful action is the topic of my next book ;-). Thanks to Saloni Malhotra for the Paul Graham quote.
Categories: inspiration · startup
“Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking.”
- Words of Anita Roddick, founder The Body Shop, who passed away this week at age of 64.
A true pioneer, who believed in the green revolution long before it was even considered something worth talking about. I was urged to read more about her by my mom, who has been practising vermiculture at home for the past 8 years and never misses an opportunity to show me that business need not be disconnected from the environment.
Anita started the Body Shop on a simple value - “Nothing the Body Shop sells pretends to do anything other than it says. Moisturizers moisturize, fresheners freshen and cleansers cleanse.” Drawing inspiration from her travels to Tahiti, Australia and South Africa, where she saw women rubbing their bodies with cocoa butter, and washing their hair with mud and the best part - it all worked and did not require the product to be tested on animals, a value that the Body Shop stands by to this day.
I always find it fascinating to learn what prompts people to take on entrepreneurship. In Anita Roddick’s case, the answer is as unthinkable as the Body Shop story that follows it. One fine day her husband announced that he wanted to fulfill his dream of traveling on horseback from Buenos Aires to New York, a feat that would take a couple of years, so Anita took out a small loan and opened her first Body Shop in 1976. Later, it was he who helped her execute her dreams and expand the Body Shop to 50 countries in 15 years.
Anita stuck to her principles. She defied retail conventions and applied lessons learnt from her mother during the Second World War. For example, why waste a container when you can refill it? And why buy more of something than you can use? Reuse, refill and recycle everything.
And what’s the story behind the green color that has become synonymous with everything the Body Shop does - “the only colour that we could find to cover the damp, mouldy walls of my first shop.” After opening the second shop within 6 months of the first, her husband came up with the idea of self-financing more stores through franchising. And, the expansion continues. The Body Shop is now in India thanks to their tie-up with master franchisee Planet Retail Pvt. Ltd. The company plans to open 50 stores over the next three years.
Her’s is a story that is beyond just “how it happened”. Most business leaders are remembered for their innovation or wealth creation abilities. Anita is one of the few who built a business on a value that is so close to heart. It questions our approach to living on this planet and what constitutes fair use of its resources. She sets the bar very high for all of us. Very few businesses would score on all these dimensions.
- Anjali
Categories: News · business · inspiration
Santosh
Anjali