Sir Terry Matthews (News - Alert) kicked off StartUpCamp5 at ITEXPO (News - Alert) East — where four early stage companies compete to win the attention, affection and then votes, of a knowledgeable audience — with an entertaining and insightful talk that set an inspiring tone for what followed.
“Why me?” Sir Terry asked. Part of the answer is a question. As a keynoter for this event, who might be better? After all, in his distinguished career he has launched 89 companies of which 83 were a success. This likely is some kind of serial entrepreneur record. It stacks up better than many heralded Silicon Valley household venture names.
Aside from the obvious, the audience enjoyed Sir Terry’s answer to his own question. “Because I enjoy business,” he said in a loud voice. He added that not only does he actually love business, but he cannot think of what he would do if he could not hire young people and mentor them to get on the road to success.
Want to know Sir Terry’s secret sauce? He willingly shared what he said was his mixed juice, which may be a bit different but not secret. The secret is in ensuring the execution.
So in his words, here are the keys to building successful start-ups. Words to grow by.
- Connect with potential clients first – the problem with most start-ups is the funders and founders want it to work before they find out if customers really need or want their product or service.
- Hire young people – you want people with energy, passion and a strong work ethic who are willing to be part of a high-performance team.
- Team spirit – is important for success because you win and lose as a team. He added that you need to show them they can make money and have fun doing it.
- Align interests – giving everyone ownership is a critical buy-in to the fact that that the work will be hard, but the experience will be worth it.
- Have a goal – purposelessness is unproductive and can be toxic, and grandiosity is OK since Sir Terry likes to create companies that disrupt markets and do so on a global scale.
- Persistence – everyone needs to accept the fact that to be a global player basically means going to war, and that if you are not persistent you cannot hope to survive.
As stated by Matthews himself, a bit unconventional in terms of the way many entrepreneurs view getting up and running and creating sustainable value, but his record speaks for itself.
A few other tidbits he shared with an enthralled audience. Were that there has never been a better time to start a business in his lifetime than right now in the tech industry because the combination of Cloud, mobile, social, etc., means every aspect of IT and communications are going through a refresh cycle and all at the same time. In a tip of the hat to the U.S. he stated that despite the fact that we live in a very flat world, America is still the premiere country for getting things done because of its superior educational system, work ethic and freedom to push the envelope without too many restrictions. He called our time, “a wonderland of business opportunities,” and pointed to the fact that in the past 25 years all new net jobs came from new companies.
He says those with a little gray can teach budding entrepreneurs the things they don’t teach in school, i.e., how to deal with lawyers, banks, accountants, produce readable quarterly statements to show results to potential investors, partners and customers. In short, business savvy.
He ended with a clarion call to those of us who are more mature, to mentor our youth to enable them to create the future. His closing words were, “I enjoy what I do. Go do it yourself.”
It turned out to be the perfect segue into the competition for a most interesting startup that followed.
Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO East 2012, happening now, in Miami, FL. ITEXPO offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. For more information on registering for ITEXPO registration, click here.
Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO. Follow us on Twitter.
Peter Bernstein is a technology industry veteran, having worked in multiple capacities with several of the industry's biggest and best known brands, and has served on the Advisory Boards of 15 technology startups. To read more of Peter's work, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Jennifer Russell
TMCnet LOGIN
Webinars
