Warren Buffet's quiet partner goes by the name of Charlie Munger. Charlie has a 500+ page book full of gems. Before becoming heavily involved in the investment field, Charlie worked at a law firm, where his top tip for attracting clients was:
It's the work on your desk.... It's the work on your desk. Do well with what you already have and more will come in.
When you look at some of the most successful companies many of them live and die by that. In spite of Microsoft's monopoly position in many markets Bill Gates still views his product through the eyes of consumers.
Gord Hotchkiss recently posted an article about how many of the newer mega-companies (like Google and Apple Computers) are built not just by viewing customers as an asset, but because the founders are customers of their own products and services, who built the service they wanted to use.
The more I think about it, the more I don’t believe customer-centricity is the key. It’s not a goal, it’s a by-product. It comes as part of the package (often unconsciously) with another principle that is a little more concrete: product-centricity. Product-centric leaders, the ones that are obsessive about what gets shipped out the door, are customer-centric by nature. They understand the importance of that magical intersection between product and person, the sheer power of amazing experiences. The iPhone is amazing. Disney classics are amazing. My first search on Google was amazing. Steve, Walt, Larry and Sergey wouldn’t have it any other way.
That strategy of investing in people who build things for themselves has been a guiding thought behind many investments for years. Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital on how he chooses what companies to invest in:
It’s the idea that the founders are doing something that they think is useful for themselves, And, then, eventually perhaps, coincidentally, perhaps accidentally, they discover that the product or service that they have built because they wanted to use something like this is that of great interest to lots of other people.
When you build for yourself you can build a product for one (ie: no demand), but the cost of failure is low, one of the core ideas in Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody. It is so fast and cheap to test things online that if you are passionate and aggressive success often happens accidentally. PageRank was an academic project for finding authoritative citations that just happened to turn into a search engine.
Check out our new Archives. For more information please check these links Medical Information Medical Information 1
Comments
Post A Comment