Roger James Hamilton's Blog, page 8

Managers use the tools they’re given. Entrepreneurs invent new tools.

Managers use the tools they’re given. Entrepreneurs invent new tools.
That’s why Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan just pledged $3 billion to build new tools that will transform disease prevention in the next decade.
New tools have always preceded major change: Like the invention of the internal combustion engine, and the creation of the Internet. Major scientific breakthroughs took place after we invented the telescope and microscope.
And the fastest growing companies of the last decade – f...

How do you avoid bottlenecks in your business?

How do you avoid bottlenecks in your business? Don’t design it as a bottle.
All the fastest growing businesses aren’t designed as bottles. They’re designed as plumbing systems. Take Grab (formerly GrabTaxi) as an example – Malaysia’s four-year-old ride-sharing startup just raised another $750 million this week, at a valuation of over $2 billion.
The company began after Tan Hooi Ling and her co-founder, Anthony Tan, were runners up of Harvard Business School’s Business Plan Contest in 2011 wit...

How do you scale a startup to over $300 million in value in 3 years?

How do you scale a startup to over $300 million in value in 3 years? That’s what 27 year old Melanie Perkins has done with her Australian startup, canva.com. The company just raised $15 million this week, doubling its valuation to $345 million.
Here’s the five simple-but-not-so-simple steps she took to get there:
1) SOLVE YOUR OWN PROBLEM
While studying graphic design at University in 2007, Melanie compared the difficult graphic design software she was using to the ease of social media: “It w...

When you get inspired, do you take action?

When you get inspired, do you take action? When Steve Jobs gave his famous 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech, Forrest Li was a student in the audience. Inspired, he decided to take action and as a result, he’s built the biggest billion dollar startup in Southeast Asia.
Today, he’s raised his latest round of funding after a recent $170 million round, valuing his startup at $3.75 billion: The biggest ‘Unicorn’ in Southeast Asia.
Forrest remembers the day of the speech, saying “I was fortunate t...

Good luck to Monique and all the inspiring athletes competing in #paralympics2016

Two years ago, 20 year old Australian student Monique Murphy fell from a 5th floor balcony at a University party in a fall that left her in a coma:
Monique recalls: “When I came out of the coma, the first people I saw were my parents and it was just instant confusion because I had no idea what had happened or where I was.”
“I woke up in hospital with a broken jaw in two places, a cut to my neck close to the main artery and windpipe, a broken left collarbone, a tear in my triceps tendon, three...

It doesn’t take nine ‘no’s’ to get to a ‘yes’

It doesn’t take nine ‘no’s’ to get to a ‘yes’:

If you’ve ever done any sales training, the old adage goes that the ratio of ‘no’s’ to ‘yes’s’ is 9 to 1. So it takes nine ‘no’s’ to get to a ‘yes’.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you know this isn’t true.

Sylvester Stallone had to survive over 1,500 rejections before he got Rocky to be made on his terms (many by the same agents multiple times).

Thomas Edison had to endure thousands of attempts to invent a reliable, commercial version of a light bulb...

Academics v/s Entrepreneurship

I worked hard through school and graduated from University of Cambridge, and then I had to spend 10 years unlearning everything I had learned before I could succeed as an entrepreneur.
In my early startups (which all failed) I kept approaching them like I approached exams. I would learn everything I could about my market, prep hard on my product development and rely on my IQ to predict how the market would respond to my product on launch day – The Exam…
When I launched my products and they di...

If you ever feel like it’s taking too long to achieve success, just think “Momofuku”.

If you ever feel like it’s taking too long to achieve success, just think “Momofuku”.
One of Japan’s most famous entrepreneurs, Momofuku Ando, kept persevering despite failure and bankruptcy until he finally reached his big breakthrough: Inventing Pot Noodles at 61 years old.
Momofuku was an early entrepreneur, starting a clothing company after leaving university. But trying to make a difference came with a price – The scholarships he paid for students to study were seen by the Japanese gover...

How have we achieved such an astronomical, exponential progression in such a short period of time?

After 5,500 years of recorded human history, with no evidence of other earth-like planets in the Universe, we have gone from discovering the first near-Earth-size planet a year ago, to finding one today that would only take 20 years to get to…
How have we achieved such an astronomical, exponential progression in such a short period of time?
Here’s the timeline:
Nov 4, 2013 – Data from NASA’s Kepler space observatory calculated that our galaxy “probably contains at least two billion planets th...

What do you do when you have a reputation for winning, and then you lose? You come back stronger.

What do you do when you have a reputation for winning, and then you lose? You come back stronger. Conor “Notorious” McGregor suffered his first UFC loss to Nate Diaz in March – after a win streak of 15 fights which included the UFC Featherweight Championship.
Following the fight against Diaz, Conor said “Defeat is the secret ingredient to success.”
“It forced me to analyze where I was going. The lack of structure in my preparation and my focus. It forced me to come back a couple of steps and...