Nicisms

2011 has been one of the most intense, fun and challenging years of my business life. I’ve had my fair share of insane highs and crushing lows.

Speaking to people in the last few weeks I noticed that many of my thoughts begin with, “And another thing I learned this year is…”. So here is a list of 20 things that I learned in 2011 as a startup founder and now the CEO of Motribe.

1. Hire slowly, fire quickly.
2. Trust your gut about: People, deals, businesses and contracts.
3. One deal can break your company.
4. One deal can make your company.
5. Don’t scale your staff with one big client. They will leave you (staff and client), eventually.
6. Cashflow, cashflow, cashflow. Startups worry about revenues, entrepreneurs know the value of cashflow.
7. Be transparent with your team, they know when something is going on.
8. If you have to, work on a public holiday, your biggest deals could happen after hours. Great business minds don’t keep office hours.
9. Don’t listen to people who like to talk, listen to people who like to listen and have achieved.
10. You know best more often than not. Trust your instincts.
11. Avoid people-politics and games where possible.
12. Be honest, open and transparent. If you aren’t happy, tell someone.
13. Fire bad clients.
14. Be picky about who you work with.
15. Don’t do business just for the money.
16. Do whatever it takes.
17. No one knows your business like you do, fight for it.
18. Make the best decision you can at the time with the facts at your disposal.
19. Say “Fuck it”, and take the risks necessary for great success.
20. Have a co-founder or business partner who you can rely on. When shit gets heavy you need someone to back you up.

It’s hard to pick the most important lessons from the list above but for me I think that number 6, 16 and 20 are right up there.

What lessons did you learn about your business in 2011?

Erik Hersman wrote a good post on the experience that African people are treated like second-class humans merely because we live in Africa. And let me just say; Erik has a point, a very valid point and an incredibly frustrating point. But his point leaves us with a massive gap in the market that no developed world companies or global corporates are willing to push in to. Africa is our playground and while the rest of the world avoids us and punishes us, we need to make inroads to block them out and own this market.

Basically we’re seen as untrustworthy by the rest of the world and are punished for that. The perception is definitely greater than the crime here. Africans appear to be untrustworthy but are by no means the biggest offenders when it comes to internet crimes as Erik showed in his post.

Erik suggests two solutions:

Too true, and there are only two ways that this might change:

First, we in Africa come up with our own payment and business solutions that work here first, and then interact with other global systems.

Second, the global corporates wake up and realize that there is quite a bit of spending power and money to be made in Africa, just like the mobile operators found out in the 90′s.

I’d like to pitch a third and more challenge-orientated solution; screw them. Forget those who punish us for being African. There are many, many business models that don’t have to include Paypal or the multitude of global corporates that punish us for where we live. Mobile is booming and Africa is at the cusp of this movement. We are setting the trends and defining the direction of where truly mobile products are going and should be going. We are the ones in control.

Yet the problem exists that we, as Africans have a persecution complex and insist on needing validation from certain places, companies and organisations to justify our success and movement forward. This is absurd.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that there are viable reasons which make us need validation from Paypal and require us not to be banned by Google and blah blah. But there are many, many flourishing startups in South Africa and Africa that are not running off the back of these giants. I can name 5 off the top of my head.

We need to start setting the trends, bucking the trends and developing the roads instead of deciding that the roads aren’t tared with gold for us as Africans. We need to stop settling for mediocrity and start striving for cutting edge excellence that we define, as Africans on our continent.

The very outdated notion that there is not enough money in Africa to create a viable business model or revenue stream is long dead. There is money on this continent, there are users on this land that we occupy and there is massive, massive potential and hunger for new products and creation of wealth.

What we need to do now is stop leaning on the developed world, toss them to the curb and take control of our continent, businesses and business models. It might be a hard road to travel but in the long term it will be the most profitable in my opinion.

This is a debate that I have raging in my head and strategies all-round at the moment.

Is it more effective to have meeting en masse or to set up carefully planned and calculated companies, agencies and people to meet with?

As I see it, Here are the pros and cons of having more meetings:

Pros

More meetings mean more chance of work (really?).
Meeting more people can lead to more connections.
More people = More products.
More meetings = more hype around your product.

Cons

Meetings are time-consuming.
Statistically I feel like more meetings with less research and planning means less success.
More meetings lead to less follow-up time and client relationship management.
Time away from the office means time away from other responsibilities.

And the pros and cons of have more relevant meetings:

Pros

More research means a greater understanding of the company you are meeting with.
Taking time to plan means providing a better pitch.
Time is not wasted on fruitless meetings.
You are able to manage and maintain relationships with key clients.
Clients feel unique and taken care of.

Cons

If meetings don’t work out you are left with few options.
Client contracts end. Then the process starts all over again if you’ve put all your eggs in a few baskets.

This is not a particularly detailed list of pros and cons but the overall messages come through clearly I think.

I am still struggling with the decision of committing my time to being out of the office at 5 or 6 meetings that might not prove to be valuable at all, or planning one meeting per day with an exceptionally well researched client who you think holds specific value with regards to specific projects you have planned or they have planned.

It’s probably a combination of both types of meetings in the end, but I hate that. I hate that I still have commit a chunk of my time to meetings that might not prove to be valuable, especially when I am leaving the office to do so. But it’s part of the way things work I suppose.

The tribe is strong with this one.

Last week (26 March 2009) saw the launch of the Vida e Caffé Twitter Account (follow them). I immediately followed them, then realised they were giving away free coffee to the first 60 direct messages. So I sent off a message and managed to get myself some coffee to collect soon at my nearest Vida, which happens to be Rosebank, Johannesburg.

The very next day I decided to have a morning meeting at Vida e Caffé in Rosebank with my coffee and my mac. I paid for my coffee. I don’t even care if I ever get my free coffee, it’s the idea that matters, the offer that counts and the ownership I feel towards the brand that makes me loyal to the Vida brand.

Hell, to be perfectly honest, I’m not even sure if I think there coffee is the best of the best, but I really don’t care.

Let me tell you why I don’t care.

I don’t care if Vida has the best coffee because I like the service I receive when I order my coffee. I get smiles, jokes and laughs.

I don’t care if Vida has the best coffee because I like the way they operate their business.

I like the placement of their shops. I like the vibe of the brand, the funkiness and the way they embrace the culture of South Africa in spite of the brand being more Portuguese.

I like that their menu is simple and their food is good, however expensive it might be.

Vida e Caffé has positioned itself as one of those brands that people would rather pay an extra R5-R10 for per coffee just to say it’s a Vida coffee. Simple. People feel like they are getting more when they are paying more.

The Vida e Caffé brand owns me and let me be clear here, I feel an acute ownership of the brand when I choose to have meetings there, drink the coffee or eat the food.

This is the presentation I just gave at Highway Africa 2008.