Official Richart Ruddie Blog - Internet Entrepreneur

Richart Ruddie Recommendation MJ Demarco

The fast lane has the type of mentality and thinking that can drive great success in your career. As life leads to a few simple rules to follow. One of mine is remembering your ABC's not always be closing but always be calm, cool, and collected. So following the 3 C's MJ Demarco has the 3A's which are Act, Assess, and Adjust. In business you are always acting, looking at the results, and revamping. If you don't you can't innovate and grow.

"It's like rowing a boat in a river: The market is the river. Your actions are the rowing. Sure, you can fight the current, but the market currents will always give you clues on the best routes.  Bottomline, GET INTO THE RIVER and see where it might take you."

Now this is not to be confused with a market research paper that says by 2024 there will be 5 million people desiring this service. If Ford Motors did that in the 1900's they would've said more horse power and not from an automobile.

"If I asked what my customer's wanted, they would have said faster horses" -- Henry Ford.


Ozan Varol also has some great talking points

If you look at SpaceX and NASA Rocket scientists they take a very balanced Goldilocks approach to a failed rocket launch or mission that doesn't pan out. Instead of being discouraged they rub it off for the greater cause. So don't celebrate a failed experiment but don't let it block you from progressing.

So instead the saying is a spin off of facebook's move fast and break things or from Ozan "Lear Fast don't fail fast"

Approaching failure through curiosity, trial, and error. Breakthroughs are evolutionary yet not revolutionary. If you learn from all the updates, changes, and iterations while getting better with the updates you'll function like a growing app where each update or software improvement makes things better and patches old bugs. Look at what Apple has accomplished with capabilities on the iphone from 2008 to now.

Apple has not become complacment with their success either and continues to improve privacy, safety, and technological improvements that improve your user experience. You can still take the wrong approach or do things wrong and still succeed. You can also do everything right and fail especially when not everything is in your control.

After a success or failure ask these questions. What is it that you did correct and why did it work out this time? What went wrong and what are your most important lessons from the results. 

I'm big on principles and the continous micro improvements in life, business, and social settings. 

-Richart Ruddie

 

 

The Viewpoint For Tech Startups in Q4 2022

Saw this and thought it was interesting in how much a landscape can change in roughly 1 year. Again when you think about how much of the world can change and adapt in the course of 1 year things don't seem so drastic. This was a great excerpt that is helpful for viewing valuations, growth, and business models in the tech space in 2022 and beyond.

"Investors are moving away from "growth at any cost" towards "growth at a reasonable cost"... Of course, it also depends what stage you're at.

Bootstrapping a company until you get closer to the $20 million a year in recurring revenue and then look to take on private equity partners or outside funding. If you can target a goal where you end the year with zero profit and maximize growth to that point.  If you can show 5% cash EBIDTA and roughly 30% year over year growth.  

The big question to ask while on the journey is how much quicker can you grow with additional capital and leverage? If the answer is not astronomical it may be better especially with depressed valuations at the moment to grow smart and not raise outside funding. Of course this all reflects on the total addressable market size for your enterprise.

VC's at the end of the day though prize growth and that is valued much more than profitability with the caveat that you can turn the switch (think Amazon's ability to grow and switch to profitability when they want) and there needs to be "levers in place where you can relatively easily slow growth and increase profitability .

For example, a company which is growing at 40% with zero profit whose Customer Acquisition Cost to Average Sales Price ratio is off the charts (high) would likely not be seen nearly as favorably as one whose metrics are more reasonable... after all, if you were to spend $100k to acquire a new client who pays $20k per year... even with high retention.

If your growth has slowed down and your company is flat but you've maximized your profitability and you've managed to achieve 40% ebitda, then it's still a great company but the buyers' would likely be different (strategic or financial vs. growth equity buyer). In this scenario, both a strategic and growth equity values might be comparable but the financial buyer might be much less."

Macho Man Randy Savage

I've soared with the eagles and slithered with the snakes and everything in between. Nobody likes a quilter and if you get knocked down get back up and fight again becasue nobody likes a quitter. -Macho Man Randy Savage

This was what the WWF Wrestler said to Arsenio Hall in the early 90's when asked if he ever cried and he said no shame in showing emotion.