Whether it collects millions of dollars of capital for your AI startup or personalize bicycles in your backyard, you must think big, act small and perfect the process.
Three examples of disruptive innovation from the initial phase to the total domain of the sector
Jeff Bezos did not propose to become the king of the pocket books delivered at home.
Today, when one thinks of Amazon, he does it as the place to get everything he needs, right now. But it was not always like that. At one point, Bezos had his mind fully focused on sending books. Everything that came later was the result of a common but complex strategy to think big and act small.
I will use Amazon as an example of the last phase of the strategy of thinking big and acting small, like a cake that I have baked before to show you the magnificent final product. And I will use two of my own Startup experiences to show you how to bake the cake and start thinking big and acting small right now.
Just before I sat down to write this article, I had just placed an order at Amazon Prime of coffee capsules and those cream splash (a whim). Both came to my door in less than 90 minutes, before my first draft ended.
I imagine Jeff Bezos, around 1994, thinking: «Joe is writing. You need your coffee. Not in five days, not even in two. He needs it now. This is how I am going to make him all others in customers for life. It is worth spending more to get it ».
Definitely, Amazon cost more money than I paid, and it is not an error or a random loss leadership. I also ordered golf gloves (Amazon does everything!) And they won’t arrive until tomorrow. But coffee and Splash Cream have arrived right now.
What surprises me are the Splashs. That is data collection and planning of the next level.
“Coffee”? Right now? We can do it. But don’t you take it with a little whore? It will be better for us to offer it right now ».
This is a micro -example of the final result of a Startup strategy that caused the company to have a massive success thinking big and acting big.
And Amazon is far from having finished when it comes to thinking big. The same strategic mentality that gave rise to shipments in 2 days, Amazon Web Services and the Delivery Service Partner program is making its way in the NFL with prime video, edible stores, health care and, supposedly, even the mobile phone service (again).
How does this affect you? To answer this question, we go back to 1994 and the delivery of books, because they were plans and relatively standardized to send, and the margins were incredible.
And to think big and act big, Amazon first had to act small. And then perfect everything.
So if Amazon is the precooked cake, this is to mix the ingredients: the example of the growth stage.
In 2017, Automated Insights, a NLG technological startup in which I had invested seven years and all my brains and guts, had been successfully acquired by a risk capital company. My partner, the founder, had left a few months before, and I had to think about the following.
I decided to dedicate myself to washing cars.
Scot Wingo, former founder and CEO of Channel Advisor, an electronic commerce data aggregation company that had taken the stock market, had been part of our Council during our acquisition. A couple of years before Spiffy had co -founded, a car wash and detailed company.
I knew Scot for about 15 years, so he was the first person I met to discuss my options. At the end of that meeting, I knew that washing cars was the “books and CD” of the mobile service, and did not want to do anything else.
In 2017, Spiffy had a couple of dozen vans and about 50 mobile washing technicians, who offered service in four cities. But we were collecting data, perfecting the process, building our own vans and software. We were using part of the same strategy as Amazon when I sold books: to think big, act small and perfect the process.
In 2018 we began to offer oil change, then we started working with fleets, then add tires, brakes and other light repairs. Today, we are no longer mobile cars, we are “mobile care and maintenance of vehicles”, in 50 cities, with 500 technicians, and always hiring.
Let’s go back another step, because before mixing the ingredients, you have to acquire the ingredients, the appropriate ingredients.
To be fair, initial capital costs to enter the automotive sector are very high. Spiffy has raised more than 30 million dollars to get where we are today.
So, it is not a path that most entrepreneurs can take. What about the first entrepreneurs?
Spiffy is not my first rodeo. In fact, I have founded or status on the ground floor of more than a dozen startups, including some founded and financed from my own pocket, with less than $ 1,000 of initial costs.
Shortly after the success of my first startup, more than 20 years ago, I started advising other founders, because the path that I had to travel was difficult, risky and stressful, and the education and advice I had received were lousy.
They soon offered me obscene amounts of money for advising companies in growth and in the last stages. He continued advising those who began, who were mostly ruined, and wrote articles like this to give so many tactical, real and free tips and training as he could.
Then my free time began to run out, and the opportunity cost of “free and cheap” began to increase. It occurred to me that there was a huge space between free advice, which helps a lot, and supercaro payment advice, which helps a couple of people a lot.
I founded Teaching Startup to fill that void, hiring experienced entrepreneurs to answer the questions of other entrepreneurs (experienced or not), through email. I started everything literally in Mailchimp, using that platform as a product, the CRM, the subscription model, everything except to pass the credit card for the miserable 10 dollars a month I asked.
And then it exploded, in good sense. They told me to dedicate myself to educational technology, to use videoconsults, organize seminars and webinarians, to write books. In other words, to act big now that I thought big.
But three years later, I still perfect the process. I do not try to be the next Gary Vee or one of those people who fill the hotels dance rooms or convention centers with motivational benefits. I try to do more and better entrepreneurs, as many as I can. It is boring. It is slow. It is not “sexy.”
But it is not to deliver books either.
I am thinking big, trying to find out how to “bring people their coffee right now” causing the process of founding and direction of a startup to be less painful, less expensive and more accessible. But I am acting on a small scale, giving me email and content, real answers and slow growth to reach a much greater goal.
This is how Bezos is built. Whether millions of dollars collect for the last taste of artificial intelligence technology or personalize bicycles in your backyard, you must think big, act small and perfect the process.
