Had the honour of being invited onto the GrowthHackers Roundtable to discuss how Multi-Product Companies manage Growth Process to enable scale and agility.
Accelerating D2C Ecommerce in uncertain times
Had the pleasure of discussing accelerating growth in D2C, Shopify, picking technology and maintaining profitability in CPG eCommerce with Philip Driver who leads CommerceCentric.
Would appreciate your feedback in the comments section below!
Culture you can’t compete with
Having worked with high performing teams both in the corporate and startup space, the below is a collection of mantras that made the unbelievable happen.
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In our world, only possibilities exist.
We don’t ask for permission. We for ask for guidance.
We love risk.
We hate those who are indecisive & make us slow. They are impediments to our collective success.
We are determined. Focused but fair.
Greed tempts us. But we take the better road, as we are in this for the long game.
We support those who deserve the opportunity, not just those who are born with it.
We love those who “bring it” day in, day out. We believe 90% of success is showing up.
We push. Sometimes too hard.
We make you uncomfortable. More than you have ever been in your life.
We are the fun side of scary.
We love the rush of achievement – pushing harder and faster than anyone could have ever thought possible.
We make the most of everything we have. We hate waste.
We dream of a better future for all peoples and things, and how we will make it happen.
We create a better world by fixing the problems that are worth fixing.
We won’t let the status quo stop us.
We don’t stop.
We fight the good fight.
Our glory is delivery.
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Need help commercialising your startup or just curious about corporate innovation? Feel free to connect via LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or via my blog; imteaz.com.
Thank you for reading my post. I regularly write about productivity hacks, people management, digital & data. If you would like to read my regular posts, please click ‘Follow’. Here are some other recent articles I have written:
- EQ Insights from the Happiest Person in the World
- Building networks of reciprocity
- Connectors win in the long run
- Sell Sell Sell – How to understand people
About: Imteaz Ahamed works in the digital space for RB. At the tender age of 6, in the early 90’s his father bought him a 386 PC for $3000, the best investment he could’ve ever made for his son. Imteaz also mentors early stage startups & entrepreneurs from all over the world and is avid fan of hackathons. He is also a StartupBus Mentor and Alumni – the most intense 72 hour startup hackathon in the world.
Trillion Dollar Coach – Book Summary
Book Summary: Trillion Dollar Coach
By Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg & Alan Eagle
Bill Campbell.
He’s responsible for some of Silicon Valley’s biggest wins. He coached some of the world’s most important CEOs; Apple and Google wouldn’t be what they are without him. Campbell was the silent weapon in the arsenal of companies that have revolutionised the world–and he did it all for free.
Yes, you read that right.
Campbell spent the latter part of his life helping CEOs grow trillion dollar companies and wanted nothing in return.
Bill took “No stock, no cash and no bullshit” – if you wanted him to coach you and/or your team. He honestly and genuinely cared for the people around him and simply wanted to do right by them. Campbell coached both the Apple and Google boards at a time when both companies were fighting legal battles with each other. He’d built such a level of trust and integrity that no one in either company thought this was a conflict. Let that sink in for a moment.
He was the Trillion Dollar Coach and he may just be one of the most inspiring people you’ll ever read about.
The book is an amazingly easy and digestible read, with great actionable advice readers could start implementing immediately. Written by Google CEO’s Eric Schmidt, the book is a fascinating anecdotal account of the impact that Bill Campbell had on the companies he coached. The book is brimming with stories that will make you laugh, reflect, think hard and most importantly, change the way you approach your life and work. At the end of each chapter, there is a concise summary where the key insights & habits of Bill are outlined for readers to action.
Key advice from the book:
- Start with Trip Reports: to build rapport and better relationships among team members, start team meetings with trip reports, or other types of more personal, non-business topics
- 5 words on a whiteboard: Have structure for 1:1s, and take the time to prepare for them, as they are the best way to help people be more effective and to grow. Prior to your team member coming into the room, write down 5 words that summarise what you need to discuss.
- Manage the aberrant genius: when you have a high performing but difficult team member – tolerate and even protect them, as long as their behaviour isn’t unethical or abusive and their value outweighs the toll their behaviour takes on management, colleges and teams.
- Only coach the coachable: the traits that make a person coachable include honesty and humility, the willingness to preserver and work hard, and a constant openness to learning. If someone is no longer coachable, they are not worth your time.
- Practice free form listening: Listen to people with full and undivided attention – don’t think ahead to what you’re going to say next and ask questions to get to real issue. Make people feel that they are the only person in the world you’re listening to.
- Be the evangelist for courage: believe in people more than they believe in themselves, and push them to be more courageous. Vocalise this when they seem nervous and unsure of themselves.
- Full identity front and centre: people are most effective when they can be completely themselves and bring their full identity to work. If you know someone is faking it to “fit in”, take them aside and privately tell them they shouldn’t have to.
- Work the team and then the problem: when faced with a problem or opportunity, the first step is to ensure the right team in place and working on it and not the other way around.
- The percussive clap: cheer demonstrably for people and their successes, and ensure the rest of your team does this as well.
- Always build communities: build communities inside and outside work. A place is much stronger when people are connected.
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Need help commercialising your startup or just curious about corporate innovation? Feel free to connect with me via LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or via my blog; imteaz.com.
Thank you for reading my post. I regularly write about productivity hacks, people management, digital & data. If you would like to read my regular posts, please click ‘Follow’. Here are some other recent articles I have written:
- EQ Insights from the Happiest Person in the World
- Building networks of reciprocity
- Connectors win in the long run
- Sell Sell Sell – How to understand people
About: Imteaz Ahamed works in the digital space for RB. In the early 90’s at the tender age of 6, his father bought him a 386 PC for $3000, the best investment he could’ve ever made for his son. Imteaz also mentors early stage startups & entrepreneurs from all over the world and is avid fan of hackathons. He is also a StartupBus Mentor and Alumni – the most intense 72 hour startup hackathon in the world.
Meet Amy, my AI personal assistant
Colleague: “Who’s Amy? And since when did you have a PA?”
Meet Amy – she’s my AI powered meeting scheduling ninja who I simply CC on email every time I need a meeting scheduled. Let me demonstrate her magic:
Amy, who already has access to all my work (Office365) and personal (Google Suite) calendars & my contact details, reaches out to Sam with available slots in my calendar:
Sam then responds to Amy with:
Amy Responds:
Sam responds and confirm the time:
Amy then proceeds to put in the call as a meeting in both of our calendars:
Amy also acknowledges Sam’s confirmation of the meeting.
As per the above example, using Amy is a breeze. She saves me on average 4-5 emails per meeting, specifically with external people where I don’t have calendar visibility.
Pro’s: so simple and easy to use.
Con’s: I’ve been using her for over a year now. Initially she was a bit patchy, but she’s significantly improved since launch.
Pricing: there are four tiers of pricing with Amy, ranging from a free account to schedule up to 5 meetings/month all the way to enterprise level plan where you can give her own individual company account.
Thank you for reading my post. I regularly write about productivity hacks, people management, digital & data. If you would like to read my regular posts, please click ‘Follow’ and feel free to also connect via Twitter & Facebook. Here are some other recent articles I have written:
- StartupBus: the most intense startup hackathon in the world
- Connectors win in the long run
- EQ Insights from the Happiest Person in the World
- Building networks of reciprocity
- Sell Sell Sell – How to understand people
About: Imteaz Ahamed works in the digital space for RB. At the tender age of 6, in the early 90’s his father bought him a 386 PC for $3000, the best investment he could’ve ever made for his son. Imteaz also mentors early stage startups & entrepreneurs from all over the world and is avid fan of hackathons. He is also a StartupBus Conductor and Alumni – the most intense 72 hour startup hackathon in the world.
Big Data: What you need to know
The below is a transcript of the speech that at the Sharq Youth Conference on 7th October 2017 in Istanbul Turkey.
Transcript:
I’m here to tell you what you need to know about the mega trend, that is big data
The value of data – is exponentially increasing, But before we talk about value of data, I want to talk about pies.
So, have a guess, at what is America’s favourite pie?
The common thought would be the Apple pie, and 5-10 years ago, you’d be right.
But guess what happens when the supermarkets decided to launch 11cm, a single serve pie?
Apple was no longer the best selling pie. Why? With a 30cm pie – because you have to share it with family and friends – apple pie is actually everyone’s second pick.
To give you background into why I’m interested in this
I work at RB.com & StartupBus
RB – is a world leader in consumer healthcare and more recently in infant nutrition
Startupbus – is the worlds most intense statup hackathon –
Where unicorns such as instacart was born
What I’m interested in: is how we bring together vast sets of data with consumers, internal business systems, media buys, external patterns and commericalise it to solve problems and unlock new revenue.
So the burning question – What’s is big Data & what makes it big?
Big data is right time business insight and decision making at Extreme Scale
In this presentation today, we are going to explore the 5 Vs of Big Data
Velocity
Variety
Veracity
Volume
& finally Value
But first – what are the trends that are driving us here?
1. Storage cost of data is coming down
2. CPU Cost – data processing costs are coming down
3. Number of connections to the internet & amount of data we produce going up
4. Cost of internet connectovity is going down
But let me show how I’ve grown up with these trends over the last 30 years
Back in 1993, my dad bought our first computer a 386 for $3000. The computer was running MS-DOS and there were limited Apps we could get for the computer
Fast forward 10 years – when I’m at high school, dial up internet starts to take off but LAN gaming was the big thing.
By the time I’m at univeristy – the first Iphone has launcha nd facebook starts its journey. This is also the time when cloud computing starts and we see billions of users with internet connectivity
And now.. We have whats called “ambient computing” – with billions of users, apps, sensors, devices. That’s a picture of my daughter, who regularly asks “alexa, tell me a a joke story”
So is the world we live in today
Going back to the 5 V’s – over the next few slides we are going to go over what each one of these mean
Volume.
A common iPhone holds 128GB of data, back in 1992 we weren’t even producing that much data per day. Versus now, we’re producing 400 iphones worth of data a second
So in 2017, every minute of the day – the amount of data we’re creating on this planet is mind blowing.. And it continuous to grow day on day, hour on hour.
Every minute we send over 500k snapchats.. Half of which is likely to be out gulf countries… 3.6m google searches & the weather channel is processing 18m data requests
Velocity
Refers to the speed at which data is created, processed, stored and analysed. Modern cars have over 100 sensors monitoring everything from fuel usage, to engine wear. I’m not even going into self driving cars which have even more systems running on them
But to put this into perspective, there over 18 billion network connections today to the internet 2.5 / per living human being today – and this number continues to grow.
Variety
We’re foing to spend some time discussing this different types of data, be it text, audio, video, sensor data, click streams, log files.
2 types of data – structured vs. unstructured data
Structured data = when we have a common & identifiable marker to tell us what it is.
Exampe – when you fill in an online form, first name, last name email – are fields from we can understand your inputs
Unstructured data – is things that aren’t so easy to classify. E.g. social posts, videos, images
Just note that 90% of the data is currently unstructured, which is by we need all this tech to decipher and make sense of it/ What I’m trying to understand in my job – is almost everything about the customer that buys my products. With the intention of serving them better and selling them more of my products
Veracity
Which is the uncertainty we have with data quality and integrity. Say you’re an ecommerce company and you have list of 1m email addresses for people who like your brand but you only ship products inside Europe, and 90% of your emails subscribers are from outside EU that email wont have a high sales/conversion rate = but does that mean email doesn’t work?
Finally on value
Let me remind of the world we live in today
Uber has no taxi
Airbnb no real estate
Facebook – makes no content
Alibaba – has no inventory
So what can we do?
The previous slides show you that theres a lot of possibilities and opportunities to do with data. I’m personally interested in healthcare & marketing technologies behind that
But also think that Agriculture & manufacturing will be massively impacted – as we see population growth and climate change impacting more of our world
So what should you do?
This is a chart showing you how to become a data scientist – which is a combination of Computer science, mathematics and Domain expertise.
Not everyone can be a data scientist, but there is nothing stopping you from understanding the data points in your field of work. Which is what we’re going to explore at the big data workshop
Which leads me to my final thought
Big data’s power does not erase the need for Vision and Insight – we still need very smart people to continue being very smart people in each of your fields