Understanding Strategic Buyers for Startup Exits

In Summary: 

🌍 ‘strategic buyer’ is an important word for ‘startups’ to pay attention to that want to exit. 😜

🌍 ESG is hard to measure and is more about being ‘good’ and personal relationships especially relating to access to capital.

🌍 Larger companies that disclose more information have higher ESG scores.

🌍 Being ‘good’ will help some, hurt others and not affect some. 

A Masterclass in ESG investing and valuation. 

A must read and watch to get another perspective to this important topic.

Have you thought about selling your company?

You’ve ‘invested’ 5, 6, 7-years of your most productive years into building your business.

How are you going to 100x this time into a generational wealth creating event?

Benjamin Franklin famously said “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”

Selling a business is both a science and art.

  • Your first step is to commit to the decision to ‘build your company to sell’.

Running a lifestyle business is fine if you want to truck along every year with incremental gains.

  • Your second step is to ‘build an exit strategy & plan’ for your company. 

Real wealth is built when you increase the value of your shares and engage with a few companies that will ultimately buy your shares.

Companies are actually intentionally sold and not randomly bought.

What side of the fence are currently standing on?

Unlock Your Entrepreneurial Strengths: Be the Best

QUESTION: 

If you were to complete this sentence with only a few words, what would you pick to describe your unique business super power?

“I am/want to be the the World’s best ________________________________________!” 

(This Post was inspired by a bumper sticker I saw which very boldly stated “I am the World’s Best Plumber.”) 

My words are:

“Entrepreneur Advocator” 

(Ecosystem)

“Entrepreneur Matcher & Grower”

(Start-up / Scale-up Founders)

“Innovation Connector & Collaborator” 

(Corporates)

“Present Father & Friend”

(Personal)

No need to share yours, just something to think about and if it resonates save your draft as a quick note on your phone. 

Food for Thought.

Speed Over Perfection in Emergency Management

“If you need to be right before you move, you will never win. Perfection is the enemy of the good when it comes to emergency management (& Entrepreneurship – WG). Speed trumps perfection. And the problem we have in society is that everyone is afraid of making a mistake.” 

Quote by Dr Mike Ryan who leads World Health Organization Health Emergency Programme (Covid-19 efforts).

Mastering Uncertainty: Lessons from Poker in Business

Poker and the Psychology of Uncertainty by Maria Konnikova has a great perspective and overlap into business. 

I’ve been thinking about the risk of uncertainty in business and this article articulates the need to have incentives that are invested to drive decisions that build skills. 

Life as in poker you are dealt a hand of cards and it’s how you play them that matters at different stages of your life or game. 

“Betting on uncertainty is one of the best ways of understanding it. And it is one of the best ways of conquering the pitfalls of our decision processes in just about any endeavor.”

“In poker, you can win with the worst hand and you can lose with the best hand. In every other game in a casino and in games of perfect information like chess and Go you simply must have the best of it to win. No other way is possible. And that, in a nutshell, is why poker is a skilled endeavor rather than a gambling one.”

Future Trends in South Africa: A Decade of Change

Found this on my bookshelf dion chang. 

Fascinating to look back on the past 10 years to now look forward to the next 10 years. 

Where is South Africa, Africa & The World? 

“Value for Time instead of Value for Money.”

Main Conclusions:

1. Open source software – 👉

2. Reawaken civil society -👆

3. Info to Experience age – 👉

4. Viral marketing – 👆(trolling) 👇 (facebook)

5. Power to the consumer -👆(ecommerce)

6. Custom made products -👇(fast fashion)

7. Eco movement – 👇👉 (consciousness but global warming)

8. Luxury – custom experiences 👆

China’s AI Superpowers: Insights from Dr. Kai-Fu Lee

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee’s book on AI superpowers is fascinating (published in Sept 2018) especially at this time. 

He outlines China’s leadership and growth in the different areas of ai in summary.

  • AlphaGo beating Go World Champion Lee Se-dol in 2016 was the ‘Sputnik’ moment that the Chinese government (280m Chinese people watching the event live) had to declare the goal to be the world leader in AI in 10 years. 
  • Due to local competition China’s tech sector has a ‘heavy touch’ approach in launching products to entrench in the market. DiDi (China’s Uber) owns all the fuel and maintenance stations. This provides more data for AI as opposed to a US’s ‘light touch’ approach I.e. Uber. 
  • China (like Africa) is a mobile first country with more data for deep learning to operate on. 

Dr Kai-Fu Lee Predictions (By Sept 2021): 

  • Internet AI: China will lead the     US 60:40
  • Business AI: China will follow the US 30:70 
  • Perception AI: China will lead the US 80:20
  • Autonomous AI: China will match US 50:50

Overall the total AI market is forecasted to be valued at $15.7 Trillion (China will capture $7T and the US $3.7T)

Understanding Blitzscaling in Business Growth

Here are my summary points, 336 pages in 303 words 😃 A book worth reading. 

Blitz = German for Lightening, successful WW2 strategy ‘Blitzkrieg’ (Lightening war) 

Scaling = Growing proportionately to each part of the company so growth is sustainable. 

Blitzscaling = Rapid, Proportionate and Sustainable business growth. 

Amazon

  • 1996: 151 employees, $5.1M revenue
  • 1999: 7,600 employees, $1.6B revenue
  • Amazon grew 50x in employees and 322x in revenue in just three years.

Mastering Growth: The 4 D’s for Business Success

How to Scale Up: The 4 D’s

1. Drivers: Managers are Coaches.

2. Demands: Leaders balance stakeholders with profitable processes.

3. Discipline: #1 Priority each Quarter and Year

Regular meetings and communication. 

4. Decisions: Focus on the biggest issues first.

Growth Problems ‘Growth Paradox’: People, Strategy, Execution, Cashflow 

1. Switch from Managing to Coaching. 

2. Strong Strategic Vision for Strong Scaling.

3. Company Strengths to Improve Revenue. 

4. One Page Strategic Plan (OPSP).

5. Execution Plan – Regular meetings and reviews.

6. Cashflow: Have 3-10x more cash than competitors.

CCC = Cash Conversion Cycle. 

How many days does $1 invested come back as turnover?

Reduce CCC by focusing on 4 areas:

  1. Sales 
  2. Delivery 
  3. Billing and Payments 
  4. Production inventory 

Summary:

  1. Growth is Complex, with the right Tools, companies can scale.
  2. Track existing processes and examine Cashflow and tweak to improve it. 
  3. Have succinct long term goals, plans & clear vision. 
  4. Have managers that coach, communicate and keep teams accountable to the scale plan.

Understanding Human Ambition in a Technological Age

The 8 main premises are (my full summary in comments below): 

1. Human Ambition: Has changed from surviving famine and war to living longer and happier.

2. Collective Co-operation: This ability to believe stories or narratives has allowed Homo Sapiens to dominate over other hominids and animals possible. 

3. Shared Narratives: Through shared narrative, religion and beliefs allow for moral laws to be upheld.

4. Modernity shaping lives but at what cost to the environment and meaning?

5. Liberal societies are increasing. Liberalism is the dominant form of Humanism.

6. Modern science challenges Liberalism. Biologically humans can be manipulated by external inputs and inherent biases. 

7. Algorithms & Technology ruling Human’s lives. Human neuroscience has been hacked by algorithms for our data and has resulted in the rise of dopamine addiction. 

8. Fighting Algorithms.  ‘Techno humanism’ is when humans merge with tech = Homo Deus.

‘Dataism’ allows for the algorithms to improve on their own without human intervention. 

What happens when the algorithm builds better algorithms than humans? 

Key Question: What happens when algorithms start creating better algorithms than humans?