A Brand New You!...

By transforming yourself in to a brand, you are building an asset that you can can leverage into social capital, relationship capital and financial capital. Brand "U.0" View more presentations from David Armano. So creating a brand new you can be a significant value creating exercise. Budding entrepreneurs should build their brand around their product category or industry. By becoming an expert not only do...

Fork It Over!...

In 1999 eBay’s website went down for 22 hours under the heavy transaction load. This was made worse as that eBay did not have its own in-house team to fix the site. eBay CEO Meg Whitman identified the best person for the job, Maynard Webb, then Gateway’s technical boss. Once she decided that he was the best she agreed to pay him an annual salary of $450,000 plus 500,000 options. Whitman was getting only $195,000 at...

What Is the Oldest Rule in Business?...

Simply this, Make a Profit, and more specifically a cash profit. It sounds obvious today; however, during uncertain economic cycles the old rules are push aside for new rules. But of course, when the time is right the old rules return to with a vengeance. However, the old rules are always good enough of the successful companies. Opportunistic organizations exist (only) to make profit (value) for the owners. This is the...

What is Winning Ugly?...

Most companies (and people) want to win looking good. Huh? For example, let’s assume that all the numbers work out and there is a tremendous business opportunity in the market – in the garbage disposal market. How many companies or people would jump at that opportunity or one equally as good in the septic tank installation, cleaning and maintenance business? The fact is that most business and people would...

The Principle of Masala...

The Principle of Masala is simply this: A diverse pool of talent, adds value and strength to the organization. Masala is a Hindi word for spice mixture. The mixture of spices is what adds that something extra to the dish. It is not just one or two spices but many. In addition, the flavors of the spices individually are much less tasty than the masala itself. Diversity is important in so many ways for the successful organization...

New Business Model for Lobster Lovers!?!...

A new business model for Lobstermen.

The Secret of IKEA in the US?...

Fortune’s Magazine has just released its annual list of the Best 100 Firms To Work For. It Is not surprising that these are also among the best firms period. From within this elite group that have developed a subgroup of the companies with the most diverse workforce. Surprise, surprise – Guess who’s there? Yes, right there near the top of the list is IKEA. Yup, IKEA North America’s workforce of 11,157 employees...

Still the land of opportunity...

In a new study just released, it states that 25% of all US high tech start-ups during the last ten years were created by immigrants. That represented the creation of 450,000 new jobs and $52 billion in revenue. Furthermore, in 2005 52% of all Silicon Valley start-ups were created by immigrants. The American dream is still alive, especially for immigrants. However, the question I have is: “What is going on here in Sweden?”...

Another reason why most European VC’s are so...

I was reading a very interesting article in Redherring about a so-called venture capital firm, the London-based Tempo Capital Partners. I say so-called because of its business model. Instead of investing to capital-needy, high-growth potential start-ups, Tempo buys the leftovers from other venture firms. Tempo is not the only company in this space, rather it is indicative of the entire European VC market. What is so interesting...