The following is quoted from Michael Volker.
"The thrill of transforming a new idea into a successful commercial venture is hard to match. We love to talk about the success stories – those that make heroes of their founders and millionaires of their backers.
We don't like to talk about our failures. Yet, we can learn a great deal from these euphemistically called learning experiences. Why do some companies fail when others succeed in the same environment?
Venture capitalists on the speaking circuit love to explain that there are three essential criteria for success: management, management and management. But when we do hear about a company that didn’t make it, the reasons given by management are usually along the lines of inadequate funding, market conditions, competition, or some governmental woe.
My business is starting-up businesses. As such, I see a great number of failures – companies that just couldn’t cut it. However, there are many more which don’t exactly fail, but aren’t smashing successes, either. These are the ones that the VC’s refer to as their living dead. I think of them as patients in a coma. They’re still alive, but they’re not performing.
I was recently speaking to a class of university engineering students on how to measure corporate performance using the P&L, i.e. Profit and Loss, statement. Indeed, it is the job of management to produce P&L results. For startups though, a P&L is merely a projection of what might happen.
In these cases, it isn’t this P&L at all that’s really important. It’s one that’s a lot more difficult to measure, although not at all difficult – yet frequently overlooked – to observe. And that is true P&L – Passion and Leadership.
One overwhelming conclusion which I’ve come to is that it isn’t just management that will make a business hum. What do we really mean when we talk about management? Is it the MBA school skills or business experience that will make a difference? While these are necessary, what are the essential success factors?
An entrepreneur who is passionate about her business and who can lead a management team, i.e. the operators who can execute a business plan, is the one who is going to hit a home run.
When looking at the usual P&L numbers, the exhaustive spreadsheets and backup material projecting future revenues and profits, it may be easy to conclude that a good management team is in place – but without passion and leadership it’s pretty useless. I’ve seen countless detailed plans and projections which are impressive to say the least – worthy of high grades and accolades – but which have not taken off.
VCs and other investors need the business plan in the course of doing their due diligence to provide the justification for risking other peoples’ money. They are obligated to look at, and validate, the P&L numbers. Angel investors who, by definition, invest their own capital don’t need these numbers. They look at the other P&L paradigm. Maybe that’s why VCs like to back angel deals – both types of P&L may be present.
Monday morning quarterbacking will inevitably point to the lack of passion and leadership. We know that because all other obstacles can be overcome if these attributes are present.
Budding entrepreneurs or those wishing to back them, must understand this. A critical self-assessment will keep the entrepreneur from deluding himself. Anyone who tends to blame others or circumstances or has trouble trusting others to carry out tasks will have difficulty.
I like what Michael Gerber, small business consultant, refers to as the E-Myth which simply states that many people who think they are entrepreneurs are merely technicians suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure. His thesis is that just because someone is good at performing a technical skill (engineering, programming, or design) doesn’t mean that they will be good at building a business that does those things. But simply hiring people with the requisite management talent isn’t enough.
The way I see it, management may well be the most important factor in building a successful company, but it’s passion and leadership that differentiates the winners."
I came across this in one of the Business Opportunity Symposium, which says that Success will brings you a lot of Dollar and Cents (C in the title should be sign of Cents, but since I can't represent it, I have to use back C).
However, referring back to the previous posting, this could also means that in order to succeed, you need to invest quite a large number of Dollar and Cents.
What do you think?
I came across this statement in newspaper, quoted from Sauber, which make me ponder whether there is anything that doesn't require money to make it success.
I have a 'step sister' who don't see $$$$$ as everything and willing to sacrifice herself to achieve what she always wanted to do- charity! I am really impressed with her philosophy. Keep it up! I will fully support you.
I started the week by continuing my assignment given by my trainer, which is to prepare a search screen which allow user to enter search criteria and shows the result in a tabular format. Besides, the result should support pagination, in which the challenge is user will be brought to the next page automatically when he/she scrolls to the last record of the page. I managed to complete the task with some clue and guidance from my trainer. Besides, I tried to improve the design by generating a new utility class that is targeted to be generic enough to support future usage.
Then, things move faster when I was called in for a briefing to start working on a POC, which stands for Proof-Of-Concept, similar to a working prototype that is to be delivered on next Thursday. I was excited as this is only my third week with the company and I am already given a chance to get involved in 'real work'. My spirit is high!
Besides, I have been spending quite some time to help up at home to ease my parents' and siblings burden. I carry the practice promoted in my company, which is 'discipline flexibility' and I know my responsibility well and I get them fulfilled.
I also started to discuss meet up friends whom I haven't been meeting for quite a while, discussing about their current situation and future plans, trying to provide some opinions or point of views... I can see the difference.
Most importantly, I started to miss my girl friend, who is in China for family trip. She will be coming back tomorrow but I can only meet her on the coming weekend. Hope she is enjoying her trip there in China.
I am growing, even more this time. Just like a rocket propelling to the space!
I came across the following Programming Precepts when I was tidying up cupboard. Quoted the following to be shared:
1. Keep your algorithm as simple as you can.When in doubt, choose the simple way.
2. Consider time and space trade-offs in deciding on your algorithm.
3. Never afraid to start over. Next time it may be shorter and easier.
4. Be sure you understand your problem completely. If you must change its terms, explain exactly what you have done.
5. Act in haste and repent at leisure. Program in hast and debug forever.
6. Start afresh is usually easier than patching an old program.
7. Always plan to build a prototype and throw it away. You'll do so whether you plan to or not.
8. When the user of global a prototype and side effects is unavoidable, be sure of the subprogram.
9. Keep your documentation concise but descriptive.
10. The reading time for programs is much more than the writing time. Make reading easy to do.
11. Don't lose sight of the forest for its trees.
12. Each subprogram should do only one task. But, do it well.
13. Keep your connections simple. Avoid global variables whenever possible.
14. Never cause side effects if you can avoid it. If you must use global variables as input, document them thoroughly.
15. Keep your input and output as seperate procedures, so they can be changed easily and can be custom-tailored to your computing system.
16. The quality of test data is more important than its quantity.
17. Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never their absence.
18. Most programs spend 90% of their time doing 10% of their instructions. Find this 10%, and concentrate our efforts for efficiency there.
19. Practice information hiding. Seperate the application of data structures from their implementation.
It has been quite a while that things have not been changing or things are changing, more of rotating around the same axis. However, I have taken a paradigm shift to enter a new environment, new challenges, which enable me to handle several concerns together while fulfilling my responsibilities to meet different parties' expectations.
I love the new environment a lot. People around are very nice and pleasant. I undergo a new environment on how a normal working life is. There are many plans after work which I can never have a chance to carry out last time. It's just seems that everyone is welcoming me back, especially my family and friends.