The richest businessmen the world talk about what must be reserved in order to become a successful entrepreneur in the year. Their advice - priceless.
Sergey Brin Co-founder of Google:
Strive for simplicity.
Simple - it is striving for ourselves. Technology is becoming increasingly difficult, and simplicity was one of the reasons why people are attracted Google. Excessive complexity of network management tools, and various devices and computers - it is a problem that needs to be, but it is very hard to solve. Success will come with ease. Look at Apple, in their work and their achievements.
We are focused on opportunities rather than on the number of products. We simply can not continue to work hard because of what life can get complicated. We do not need 20 products with 20 ways of working. I got lost on our site, when I tried to keep track of everything. It is better to have a small number of products that would be jointly used some functions.
Chris Defolf Co-Founder of Myspace
Let social networks will be social.
The most important thing - to stay true to what is valuable in the eyes of your community. You can not simply impose themselves and the people trying to sell something that they do not need - it's generally good advice for sellers, but especially for sites based on the community, such as MySpace. You need to find a way to somehow improve people's lives, but that would not contradict your essence.
Rachel Ray chef, author and entrepreneur.
Turn your passion into an empire.
Be open to new possibilities. Ispol them without thinking, they will bring you money or not. I am five years, led by local TV program "Meals in 30 minutes", the first two years I did not pay for it. Then I began to receive $ 50 per transfer. I spent more on gasoline and food, but I loved working on this show every week and appear on the screen in the homes of viewers, and so I will not go away, despite all costs.
I also realized that you can not be all things to all people. If you are somewhat successful, even if that is what will be your main goal. In my case, it is available. All of my products to be available, people can afford. The price of olive oil, the recipe for which we are developing with Colavita, will be appointed so as to compete with every available extra virgin olive oil. We're going to sell our oil in the supermarket economy class, and not expensive stores, because that's where most of our products to buy viewers. Our pots and pans should be strong and thick-bottomed, but remain affordable. Find something special and keep it. My brand is based largely on my daily life.
Richard Branson The founder and head of Virgin Group of Companies
Learn to say "no" (even if you know how most trouble-free person).
Often, I find it very difficult to refuse a person, because often people I say "no" - these are people I do not want to disappoint. But it must be hard. Say "no" - not the easiest task that you must have this innate ability. I used to often avoid doing it yourself and hiding behind other people, charging them speak for me, but if you head, then it is wrong.
I remember being in the age of fifteen, I asked Vanessa Redgrave (Vanessa Redgrave) and James Baldwin (James Baldwin) for an interview, and that they took the time to reply, meant to me an incredible amount. It inspired me. So, if you stand at the head, it is essential to respond to people and support them. And even if you actually deny them, if you have to say "no", whether it be work, advertising, or the idea that you suggest, take the time to do it yourself.
I recently met two prominent businessmen from San Francisco, who said said that when they receive such offers by e-mail, just send them to your shopping cart. I asked them why and they replied: "The time that we spend on the answer, we could use to make something of value to the business." Perhaps from a practical point of view they are right, but I still think that this is not correct in terms of morality. And I suspect that all that is wrong with the moral point of view, ultimately bad for business.
Howard Schultz Chairman of the Board of Directors of Starbucks
Do not be afraid to be an entrepreneur for the people.
Over the past 10-15 years, significantly changed the rules with regard to brand building. Where once the company spread its influence through traditional marketing, regular customers of the company is now seeking to strong emotional relationship with her. The basis of this relationship is the most important feature of a world-class brand: trust. Trust your employees and your customers trust.
Even earlier, we tried hard to exceed the expectations of our customers. But we knew that in order to achieve this goal, we first need to exceed the expectations of our employees. It has never been clear in 1990 when we were still a private company, which has not yet become profitable. That's when we began to provide comprehensive medical care for all our employees, including those who worked part-time. We also firmly believed that our people should share the success of Starbucks via stock options - "share beans" as we called them. It may be hard to imagine that we fought a costly idea, developing our business. But it was not cost, but rather an investment.
Rapid growth can make invisible a lot of mistakes and calls the heady feeling, because that is sometimes difficult to see the need for investment in the future. Think of investing in your company as if you are building a building a hundred floors - you first need to put a solid foundation that will support future growth.
Chad Hurley Co-Founder of YouTube
Give your startup an opportunity to fight for life.
Immediately tested. Start your product or service before you receive your funding. See how people react to it before you make a presentation in PowerPoint and make a business plan - give people what they can use and go from it already.
Listen to feedback. By starting out, do not think that you know all the answers. Listen to the user community, and change your product for them. We had many ideas on how to develop our service. Coming from PayPal and eBay, we presented the YouTube like a good way to add video to auctions, but no one used our development in this way, so we did not add support for this possibility.
Give your partner what they need. Talk with your business partners to clear them for ideas, and try to agree to their demands. An interesting example - our relationship with music studios. In the case of Warner and other studios we saw an opportunity zaschit their copyrights and to create a new market. Now we can, for example, add music to videos about travel. This gives users the freedom to do and do it legally.
Kevin Rose Co-Founder of Digg
Let orchestrate the users themselves.
The idea to allow users to manage your website may seem intimidating at first. From the first day we asked ourselves: "What will be on the front page today?". And you absolutely can not imagine what it would be. But if vzgyanut ago, the idea is to give control in the hands of users attracted to the site, more and more people. They have a feeling that they somehow own and discover something new. If you allow users to share interesting things for them, they will use it to talk about what is important to them.
We have 17 employees and each day the site sent 4500 articles. We could hire more people, but the site was not made for this. It was created to allow users themselves to determine how it should be and to watch out for him.
Steward Butterfield Co-Founder of Flickr
Not only money has value
One of the biggest lessons for me - there must be a reason why you are doing something. You really have to like what you are doing. Business must be based on some idea. This does not mean that it should not have to do with profit, but if it's the only reason why you work, it is usually not successful. That the company was profitable, you need a self-confident employees, satisfied customers and reliable suppliers. Working here, I want to achieve something. All employees are committed to their work Flickr, it's the eyes of the world. Otherwise I would have simply said: "To hell!" And went to sunbathe on the beach.
Brad Anderson Chief Executive Officer of Best Buy
Use of gender equality for its own purposes.
Women are changing the rules in the consumer electronics market. Each year they spend on such products for more than 55 million dollars and 90 percent of cases they affect the purchase decision. Only a madman would not pay attention to it. So the question is, what changes do you do to make your company more attractive for such an important customer group.
The best way to do this? Pay attention to what they think thousands of women working in your company. They - a real treasure for you. Most companies do not see that what they think employees. And they'd really like to listen to them, and they want to do business better. In our case, this means that our store personnel should reflect our community. That is, half of all employees in the store must be a woman - a goal which still seeks to Best Buy. Indeed, one can see a significant increase in revenue from those stores, which observed a roughly equal ratio of men and women in the state.
Philip Rosedale Founder and CEO of Linden Lab
Discover the real life in a virtual economy.
As a futurist, I think it is very possible that the turnover of money around virtual objects or characters exceeds the turnover in similar areas of the real world. When your avatar looks like a Hollywood movie star, and when you're in so much detail is considering his character, that you can see every tattoo, scratching, nose ring, and even the pores on your skin, the situation is quite likely that people will become more attached to his character than to the own body, because it is much easier to change. But there are people who dropped weight or improve their physical condition as a result of the game in Second Life. Can you believe it? Second Life is very plastic. Your environment and the world around you is so easy to edit, it creates an inner feeling that you are able to do this in real life. On this subject, there's even a bunch of jokes. One guy said, "Because of this game, I lost 30 pounds!" And I immediately sent him a message: "No way!". He said: "I have two years working as a designer in Second Life. I've been doing the building, and every day, changed his avatar. After two years, I told myself that this is so easy to change your avatar, it should be, it's not that hard to do and truly. " The world of Second Life is so easy to change. It is so flexible that causes addiction. It is contagious. And as you begin to look at the real world: "Why do not I paint the walls?".-