I have personally
noticed a trend that; when a successful company courts too much attention, one
way or the other it will come back to affect them, even if the fundamentals and
operations of the company still remains strong. Take for example, IBM,
Microsoft, Yahoo, MySpace, even Google and more recently Facebook (even though
nothing has changed between the time the company went public and now, but the
value of the company has halved).
Look at the mighty success Apple, with the
release of the iPhone 5, when you read what the critics have to say about it,
the iPhone 5’s undoing is that Apple is such a success, that although this
particular iPhone meets our
extremely high expectations for it, it didn’t beat our extremely high
expectations hence the disappointment (What an overly successful
company/product has caused for itself). I think what the PR guys at Apple
should do, is to lower the expectation of the market, then they would always
stun us.
The
Amazon Story:
Here in lies the
love I have for Jeff Bezos; Amazon is one company that is doing absolutely
great, without courting any attention from the public. I will tell you the
truth, a person that decides to sacrifice current revenue in order to reap
higher profits in the future, is sure a wise person. Info has it
that, Jeff Bezos has been subsidizing the cost of the Kindle Fire for as
much as $50 on each sold, in order to gain a foothold in the market for
tablets, and in doing this he expects an initial loss. And it is working;
everybody on the train when I’m commuting back home is seen reading something
on his or her kindle, (I suspect they
are all reading “Fifty Shades of Grey” though).
Amazon.com was
founded in 1994, when Jeff Bezos decided to quit his lucrative and secure job
to own his business. He said he wrote the business plan for Amazon.com after
making a cross-country trip from New York to Seattle. After which he
decided to invite 300 friends and acquaintances to test the site, he was
satisfied with their feedbacks. Jeff Bezos decided to take the site live and,
within the space of a month, the company had sold books in all 50 states in
America and in 45 countries. Within two months of starting, he had sold books
worth over $20,000 a week. The success of the new start-up Amazon.com had
ruffled a few industry leaders like Barnes & Noble and Borders, and they
fought back, using their ready presence in the industry to muscle the small
company out of the online book market. But Jeff Bezos disclosed his strategy to
Inc in 1997: 'we're going to be unprofitable for a long time. And that's
our strategy’.
Very few people are
ready to leave their comfort zone, as the saying goes “no risk, no reward”. I
will advice you take that daring first step today, the first step is usually
the hardest but you just have to believe yourself and take the step, if Jeff
had stayed back at his job, let say he even rose to become the CEO, he sure
wouldn’t be worth up to $1 billion, (even the very famous GE CEO Jack Welch’s
net-worth isn’t up to a billion) but Jeff Bezos is the 26th richest person in
the world, with a staggering $21 billion to his name.
If one person can
read this and be spurred to take that step, then I would have achieved what I
set out to do, which is to inspire/push/guide/encourage you, to be daring and
take that step to become who you want to be.
Deolu Adesanya:
Shares the opinion
of an enterprising mind. He believes Ideas and Innovation change the world. He
believes in Africa. Most of all, He believes in YOU. He loves to
regularly speak and write about the private sector and sustainable development
in developing countries. He is a PhD researcher in entrepreneurship at the
University of Leicester. He also carries out business consulting services. He
is a Christian. He is also fashion conscious. He blog regularly at CreativityTurf.com
