This weekend I have been giving a lot of thought around how companies have established themselves. And my favorites are Tesla, Uber, and Amazon. How Elon Musk, Travis Kalanick and Jeff Bezos really made these companies and how they scaled them to these levels.
I am currently reading The Everything Store and have reached the part where Bezos meets Google founders and invests in the enterprise when it was a small company. Looking forward to read the later chapters because the story is quite inspiring. What I am really getting to is that how do these entrepreneurs think and how they eventually create foundations to their businesses. And I thought lets go one by one, apart from having watched almost every video since last few years on wherever these entreprenuers made their presence I also ended reading extensively on them. I also re watched a couple of the videos to get some gripping thoughts. I feel I should go one by one to get to the bigger picture -
Travis Kalanick - I have been following him since Uber launched in Bangalore and its interesting to see the way he scaled his business. Its also interesting to note that he did a lot of iterations as an entrepreneur to establish a company like Uber. He had Scour and then Red Swooch which later got acquired by Akamai and then eventually the mammoth which is known as Uber today. Also, before Kalanick was for a brief period of time spending time at a beautiful town named Varkala in India and was coding extensively from what I collect from the interviews I had heard from long ago. Travis considers himself as a math professor and he just really loves to solve the hardest problems that we people face today. He spoke about the Jitty in his Ted video and made an analogy to the number of rides a company did a 100 years ago and how Uber is also doing almost the same, if not, higher rides in this day and time. What I really noted from his thoughts is that he really relies a lot on math and numbers and typically looks at things from small context and then applies to the bigger picture. If you notice "4 Septembers" concept that he spoke about where they talked about the earnings per driver in every September its really fascinating to see that the math he has made makes a lot of sense. Though i am sure the supply of cars/drivers would have also increased every September and they've ensured that the demand/earnings also increases significantly. Also, UberPool, executed brilliantly which off-course is a empowering a Shared Economy model. If you notice, especially in Bangalore - Uber first started with Black Cars (Premium), then the UberX (sedans) and Uber Go, and eventually UberPool. It has not just ensured more people and lesser cars but also brought in a more matured mindset among people. I mean the only reason why someone wouldn't opt for a Pool ride is if that person has a time crunch. But if you really, logically, you aren't just being a responsible citizen, you also money from a small detour. I feel its a brilliantly executed concept by Uber and I am sure a lot of math went around it and our Professor and his smart team just had great formulas(read algorithms) to solve such problems! Moral - Solves problems in the most efficient manner.
Jeff Bezos - Unlike Travis, tt didnt take Bezos a lot of iterations before Amazon started. Tenure at D.E.Shaw, his network with colleagues at the firm and finding the right people to build foundations of his business showed his dedication to build a strong company first. When it comes to what I was speaking about - which is thinking then theres a fascinating idea that I got to know about. In the initial pages of the Everything store I came across the concept of 'Writing your ideas down to build a strong mindset' which was a method used when Bezos was in school but it is at the core of Amazon till date. I have heard that you typically have to write down 6-7 pages of why you want to execute and idea and think very critically before you present your idea. I would love to try this one because you never know how much clarity you would get out of it! It seems like a wonderful technique to de-clutter your thoughts and be much more clear in your verbal communication. It also creates a strong thought process because you would have already extensively, inclusively in terms of breadth the factors that may become a road block or accelerators to your ideas. There's a lot of things to learn from the company, including that there are no presentations and that a meeting should have only enough members that can consume a pizza together. Organizations can use it but I guess you have to be effectively using these techniques to drive amazing ideas for the organization. Amazon is a brilliant example of how ideas can be scaled. Its not the perfect company, they've had failures as well, a lot of people think the Fire Phone was a failure and it may have been. But look at Prime membership, which apparently was a product of 7 years of consistent research. Fascinating stuff isnt it? No wonder they are doing so well with the membership program. We could always talk about all the other things like acquisition of Whole Foods in the USA and the rumored potential to acquire Big Basket in India. But I am really just focusing on the mindset and the thought process of these entrepreneurs. :)
Elon Musk - Well anybody who has read about him or watched him would be in awe of what he has accomplished. I mean how can you enter a new arena each time and still be massively successful and beat every established institution. I watched his Ted Talk twice and I noticed two important things -
1. His idea of thinking from the First Principles of Physics - which basically means you boil down the problems to the their fundamental truths and then start finding solutions to work around them.
2. Work Hard - He has always said this and impressed upon this fact all the time. Its quite inspiring to note how he once told a reporter that - "Work Super Hard. Put 100 hour work weeks if required. If you are doing the same thing, you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them to achieve in 1 year". On the contrary I did hear a friend once saying "But you wouldn't want to burn out" which is true as well. But hey, depends really on what your motivation level is and how you manage it. With Musk its just solving one problem and moving to another and he has always been that way. If you really notice he hasn't stuck on to one thing. He's unstoppable. And you would really admire him if you do a Elon Musk vs other entrepreneurs. A friend once tried to explain me on iPhones being different and he said, "There's iPhone and then there is everything else" I guess you could think of Musk in the same way!
If I sum it up, he really breaks the problems to their fundamental truths works SUPER hard to solve, create a product and scale it to never seen heights. Also, he has challenged every existing industry by doing this - SpaceX vs most govt organizations, Tesla vs most established brands in the world and Solar City.
Still a long way to go to connect the dots but I guess this is one of the ways to broaden my world view!
I am currently reading The Everything Store and have reached the part where Bezos meets Google founders and invests in the enterprise when it was a small company. Looking forward to read the later chapters because the story is quite inspiring. What I am really getting to is that how do these entrepreneurs think and how they eventually create foundations to their businesses. And I thought lets go one by one, apart from having watched almost every video since last few years on wherever these entreprenuers made their presence I also ended reading extensively on them. I also re watched a couple of the videos to get some gripping thoughts. I feel I should go one by one to get to the bigger picture -
Travis Kalanick - I have been following him since Uber launched in Bangalore and its interesting to see the way he scaled his business. Its also interesting to note that he did a lot of iterations as an entrepreneur to establish a company like Uber. He had Scour and then Red Swooch which later got acquired by Akamai and then eventually the mammoth which is known as Uber today. Also, before Kalanick was for a brief period of time spending time at a beautiful town named Varkala in India and was coding extensively from what I collect from the interviews I had heard from long ago. Travis considers himself as a math professor and he just really loves to solve the hardest problems that we people face today. He spoke about the Jitty in his Ted video and made an analogy to the number of rides a company did a 100 years ago and how Uber is also doing almost the same, if not, higher rides in this day and time. What I really noted from his thoughts is that he really relies a lot on math and numbers and typically looks at things from small context and then applies to the bigger picture. If you notice "4 Septembers" concept that he spoke about where they talked about the earnings per driver in every September its really fascinating to see that the math he has made makes a lot of sense. Though i am sure the supply of cars/drivers would have also increased every September and they've ensured that the demand/earnings also increases significantly. Also, UberPool, executed brilliantly which off-course is a empowering a Shared Economy model. If you notice, especially in Bangalore - Uber first started with Black Cars (Premium), then the UberX (sedans) and Uber Go, and eventually UberPool. It has not just ensured more people and lesser cars but also brought in a more matured mindset among people. I mean the only reason why someone wouldn't opt for a Pool ride is if that person has a time crunch. But if you really, logically, you aren't just being a responsible citizen, you also money from a small detour. I feel its a brilliantly executed concept by Uber and I am sure a lot of math went around it and our Professor and his smart team just had great formulas(read algorithms) to solve such problems! Moral - Solves problems in the most efficient manner.
Jeff Bezos - Unlike Travis, tt didnt take Bezos a lot of iterations before Amazon started. Tenure at D.E.Shaw, his network with colleagues at the firm and finding the right people to build foundations of his business showed his dedication to build a strong company first. When it comes to what I was speaking about - which is thinking then theres a fascinating idea that I got to know about. In the initial pages of the Everything store I came across the concept of 'Writing your ideas down to build a strong mindset' which was a method used when Bezos was in school but it is at the core of Amazon till date. I have heard that you typically have to write down 6-7 pages of why you want to execute and idea and think very critically before you present your idea. I would love to try this one because you never know how much clarity you would get out of it! It seems like a wonderful technique to de-clutter your thoughts and be much more clear in your verbal communication. It also creates a strong thought process because you would have already extensively, inclusively in terms of breadth the factors that may become a road block or accelerators to your ideas. There's a lot of things to learn from the company, including that there are no presentations and that a meeting should have only enough members that can consume a pizza together. Organizations can use it but I guess you have to be effectively using these techniques to drive amazing ideas for the organization. Amazon is a brilliant example of how ideas can be scaled. Its not the perfect company, they've had failures as well, a lot of people think the Fire Phone was a failure and it may have been. But look at Prime membership, which apparently was a product of 7 years of consistent research. Fascinating stuff isnt it? No wonder they are doing so well with the membership program. We could always talk about all the other things like acquisition of Whole Foods in the USA and the rumored potential to acquire Big Basket in India. But I am really just focusing on the mindset and the thought process of these entrepreneurs. :)
Elon Musk - Well anybody who has read about him or watched him would be in awe of what he has accomplished. I mean how can you enter a new arena each time and still be massively successful and beat every established institution. I watched his Ted Talk twice and I noticed two important things -
1. His idea of thinking from the First Principles of Physics - which basically means you boil down the problems to the their fundamental truths and then start finding solutions to work around them.
2. Work Hard - He has always said this and impressed upon this fact all the time. Its quite inspiring to note how he once told a reporter that - "Work Super Hard. Put 100 hour work weeks if required. If you are doing the same thing, you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them to achieve in 1 year". On the contrary I did hear a friend once saying "But you wouldn't want to burn out" which is true as well. But hey, depends really on what your motivation level is and how you manage it. With Musk its just solving one problem and moving to another and he has always been that way. If you really notice he hasn't stuck on to one thing. He's unstoppable. And you would really admire him if you do a Elon Musk vs other entrepreneurs. A friend once tried to explain me on iPhones being different and he said, "There's iPhone and then there is everything else" I guess you could think of Musk in the same way!
If I sum it up, he really breaks the problems to their fundamental truths works SUPER hard to solve, create a product and scale it to never seen heights. Also, he has challenged every existing industry by doing this - SpaceX vs most govt organizations, Tesla vs most established brands in the world and Solar City.
Still a long way to go to connect the dots but I guess this is one of the ways to broaden my world view!
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