Ahabwe Collins

What one small step you take today could lead to a multi-million dollar chain reaction? That’s what happened to Susan Wojcicki when she was 30 years old: “I had just got out of business school and bought a house. So I needed to get some renters in order to help pay the mortgage...” So she rented our her garage to two Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who used it to start up their new  company, Google. Susan remembers the first year, with many “late nights together in the garage eating pizza and M&Ms, where (Larry and Sergey) talked to me about how their technology could change the world." They finally convinced her to join as Employee No.18 and their first marketing manager, when she was four months pregnant. First job? Relocate them all to a proper office. Called the “Mom at Google”, Susan was the first in the team to have a baby, and her “family first” philosophy led to Google topping the ‘Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For’ list. The “family” grew, lite...

Four things make up 79% of all business failures: TOP TEN STARTUP MISTAKES #1 - Building something nobody wants (36%) #2 - Hiring poorly (18%) #3 - Lack of focus (13%) #4 - Failing to market & sell (12%) How to best avoid these failures: #1 - Always start with the customer, not the product. Get your beta group / user group of customers and work with them to deliver what they love. People will pay you to do what they love, not to just do what you love. #2 - Outsource to experts who manage themselves, not workers who need to be managed. Hire people who let you do more of what you do best, not people who take you away from your talents because they need to be managed. #3 - Once opportunities begin to grow, don't get defocused. Anything that doesn't add to your customer's experience isn't worth doing. #4 - Don't fail by having a great product that no one knows about. Don't rely on someone else to sell your product until you have more sales than you can h...

__ Your marketing strategy. When I first got started, I sure knew how to sell, but I didn't know how to market… I must have been in business for about five years when I first really got into marketing. It happened during a particularly difficult time in our economy, when things were really down and business wasn’t really moving. I tried to run some adverts in a local newspaper to create awareness of the things I did, but things did not really move as I had hoped. And when people did call, I seemed to get the wrong type of customers to the ones I wanted. "I really need to teach you about marketing," my friend Enoch Hwande said to me. "Oh, you mean I should advertise more?" He was the Creative Director of a major international advertising agency. "No I'm not talking about advertising. I am talking about marketing." "What’s the difference?" "There is a huge difference, and you will not get very far in developing your bus...

___You and your brand. When I launched my first business in 1996, I didn’t really know that much about marketing. As I mentioned in my first post in this series, I first learnt to "sell" when I was only eight years old. Remember my story about selling sweets to my school friends? People bought from me because they knew me and, of course, I was selling something I knew that they wanted! It’s possible to run a very successful business short-term, even if you don’t know anything about marketing. You can sell, sell, and sell. But if you want to run a really profitable business, you must understand the importance of marketing, which involves many steps. Confused? It only means I have gained your attention. Now let's talk! # Sales and marketing are not the same thing, but they go hand in hand. # Advertising and marketing are not the same thing. Advertising is simply one of the tools we use in marketing. # It's important to develop a brand. In the end, the most...

1.You don't have thick skin.   It seems that as soon as you announce you are starting a business every one is an expert in starting a business. Not everyone will love your idea or product, and they won't be afraid to tell you. I'm not saying you shouldn't listen to criticism, but you have to be able to take the punches and not take everything personally. 2.You don't like being "connected." As an entrepreneur, there really isn't such a thing as "disconnecting" from the world, not in the beginning anyway. You'll be living and breathing your new company while trying to educate everyone about your business. You'll be constantly thinking about how to improve things, reduce costs, and sell more. There is no such thing as a 9-to-5 work schedule when you're an entrepreneur. 3.You need to be praised for your efforts. If you're an employee, you're probably used to getting constant feedback about your performance, task and ...

The greatest entrepreneur speech ever: “Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and...

Sam Madden Co-founder of PocketSuite Sam Madden is co-founder of  PocketSuite , a mobile business management app helping self-employed professionals get paid.  More people are starting new businesses than ever before. That’s not because all of a sudden this year more folks have better ideas than in years past. It’s because the barriers to creating a new business have never been lower. Technology has broken down the walls and empowered anyone to start a business of any kind. Flexibility, cost and mobility have created a solid foundation for entrepreneurship to continue growing in the years to come. Here are three key reasons anyone can become an entrepreneur.

What does the chaos in your life, and the rising chaos in our world, have in common with this article from Scientific American? The story of how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly: “As children, many of us learn about the wondrous process by which a caterpillar morphs into a butterfly. The story usually begins with a very hungry caterpillar hatching from an egg.” “The caterpillar, or what is more scientifically termed a larva, stuffs itself with leaves, growing plumper and lo nger through a series of molts in which it sheds its skin. One day, the caterpillar stops eating, hangs upside down from a twig or leaf and spins itself a silky cocoon or molts into a shiny chrysalis.”

___Seize the moment when it’s offered. Over the past few years, I’ve talked to you a lot about the most important skills in business. First and foremost - the capacity to READ. Second, and completely essential: the ability to work in numbers (data). Now in the current series we’re looking at the third most important: Every entrepreneur must be a good salesperson! Some of you have pointed out that if an entrepreneur doesn’t have the ability to sell and market, no matter what other skills he or she might have, the business will sooner or later be doomed. Sadly, it’s really true. You must never be fearful or shy or apologetic about selling. Let’s recap this series so far: Part 1) Intro: Every entrepreneur must be a good salesperson; Part 2) Presentation is extremely important: Always present with passion and excellence; Part 3) Study to show yourself approved: Accounting, finance, economics, sales and marketing are the foundational skills for any entrepreneur.

Do you believe in luck? Here’s the incredible story of 34-year old William Tanuwijaya, who has created Indonesia’s first Billion dollar ‘Unicorn’, and the lucky set of coincidences that led to him raising $100 million when he most needed it… When he became a teenager, Williams’ father sent him on a one way ticket from Sumatra to Jakarta with the family’s savings, hoping he’d end up with a better life. William enrolled in a college and for three years worked 12 hour night shifts in an Internet cafe to pay for his tuition. Using his nights exploring the Internet, he got inspired to start his company, Tokopedia, as the first online marketplace for Indonesia in 2009.