Is There a Superman Your Clark Kent Can Become?

March 22, 2013 By Leave a Comment
clark kent

In this early 2005 interview with Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder described Facebook as: "I mean, I just really want to see everyone focus on college and make a really cool college directory product...there doesn't necessarily have to be more..." Zuck was intent on just focusing in colleges. He was ecstatic with his 3 million users. Then, somewhere along the way, he realized he was sitting on a goldmine. Now? He's just passed his first BILLION users. Sometimes, all we need is a fresh look at our business to experience an epiphany.  Pao and I experienced the same thing in STORM around 2 years ago. (at a lesser extent than Zuck, obviously) We were making most of our money off … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Startup Ideas, TOOLS AND RESOURCES, Your Value Proposition Tagged With:

Employing The Mach 3 Strategy

February 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment
smooth sheen like could only be accomplished by a Mach 3!

I was shaving my head this morning in the shower with my trusty Mach 3. I thought the blades needed changing. I made a mental note to myself to buy a fresh pack of blades - the woefully overpriced ones at the grocery counter. I had been buying these blades for FIFTEEN years already - I had been paying Gillette a small fortune. Funny, because I had never wanted these high-end blades in the first place - I won this Mach 3 way back in the 1998 Christmas party in my first corporate job. Once I got the Mach 3, somehow I just made a habit of buying the blades. I represent recurring revenue for Gillette. They must love me. If your startup idea can operate with a recurring, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Sales, STARTUP ADVICE, Startup Ideas, Your Value Proposition Tagged With: , , ,

Think Bigger. Much Bigger.

October 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment
think bigger

Whatever you're thinking, think bigger. - Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO When thinking of or developing your startup idea, the overwhelming advice now is to "get out of the building" and do honest-to-goodness research with potential customers. Intuitively, you'd think that what should happen is that your idea would narrow down, right? This was what I thought: that as the "big idea" comes into contact with research and reality, you'd have to scale your plans down and "get real." What I'm finding out though, is the reverse. Think Facebook. When Zuckerberg originally thought of "TheFacebook", he was targeting only universities and campuses. As he developed his startup, he began to realize … [Read more...]

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Emulate Tony Stark: Intuit The Future

October 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment
tonystark

When Pao and I started STORM, we thought of a product which people WILL be buying - an online flexible benefits service for companies. There was nothing like it in the market yet. We decided to pursue a FUTURE need, as opposed to coming up with something we knew people were ALREADY buying. In 2005, we launched our product with a hotel seminar which exhausted the little capital we had. It was a fully-booked (free) event, which made us think, "We're going to kill it!" Uhm. Not really. When we talked to everyone after, NO ONE wanted to buy our product - largely because people didn't understand it, and no one was using it. Wet behind the ears, we concluded that we still needed to … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Life in a Startup, STARTUP ADVICE, Your Value Proposition Tagged With:

Delivering Happiness Delivers Big-time! (A book review)

September 27, 2012 By 2 Comments
Culture. Matters.

After finishing a good book, I typically lie back, savor the moment, and say to myself, "that was a good book." Then I try to think of ways of applying what I learned in different aspects of my life. In the middle of finishing Tony Hsieh's (pronounced "shay") super cool book, Delivering Happiness, I HAD to talk about it to my team immediately. This book makes you want to jump out and change the way you do things. This is a great book. Structurally, the book talks about 2 main things in sequence: a) Tony Hsieh's personal entrepreneurial journey (he started out wanting to be the King of the Worms) b) The rise of Zappos (an amazing story) But the neat thing is, he makes the book into … [Read more...]

Filed Under: TOOLS AND RESOURCES, Your Value Proposition Tagged With:

Scaling Your Caring: How You Can and Why You Need to

September 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment
carebears

A few weeks ago, my wife posted "what's a good ramen place?" on her Facebook account. We love ramen and wanted to find out if anything new was out there. She was besieged with a score of answers. She got the usual suspects - like Ramen Bar and Ajisen Ramen.  Then we noticed an answer which was met with near-universal approval from her friends - Tamagoya Noodle House. Apparently, it was a small, obscure ramen place in Antipolo which gets crowded fast. (How can we say no to that?! Resistance = futile) And you know what? We went and just loved it. We're now frequent customers. More than ever, we have been consulting Google less and less and our friends on our social networks … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Leadership, STARTUP ADVICE, Your Value Proposition Tagged With:

Don’t Put Parrots In Customer Service

May 25, 2012 By 1 Comment
Parrot smile

A few weeks ago, I was in the hospital passionately arguing with an HMO officer who was insistent on applying a policy which was so evidently not applicable to my own particular case. "If we implement this policy, instead of the insurance paying for my fees, I would be paying YOU - it doesn't make any sense." "Ganoon ho talaga." WHAT?! I was furious. But I understood what was happening. The person on the other line was trained to placate customers and explain policy, but no true power to interpret or be flexible. This is inherently why customer service sucks in so many companies - most customer service personnel are simply given a script and if-then scenarios. Invariably, there … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Life in a Startup, STARTUP ADVICE, Your Value Proposition Tagged With:

Dare to be Different…like Tita Moning

December 12, 2011 By 4 Comments
tita-moning

I still remember my first visit to LaCocina de Tita Moning when my wife took me there around five years ago. Vividly. Why? It was such an experience. A few days before our planned dinner, Pauline asked me what I wanted to order, which I found a little weird. Uhm...so can't we just order from the menu when we're there, just like every other restaurant? Apparently not. This restaurant does not accept walk-ins. You have to call them a full 24 hours before your planned meal to preorder your food. Oh, and there's not much to choose from. There are only 12 set menus, so you just choose once. That's it. These items alone made them different from 99.9 percent of the food places I … [Read more...]

Filed Under: STARTUP ADVICE, Your Value Proposition Tagged With: , ,
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