EPTHello everyone its your favorite MysteryMeat! I’ve been incredibly busy lately playing mafia on DM and busy with school and trying hard. A few weeks ago I heard about a program about my school for a really exclusive/intense/amazing business/entrue/tech group. Its a little hard to explain but basically its some of the smartest and most driven entrepreneurs on campus to meet up and connect and start businesses. Anyway long story short, I somehow manage to sneak in, and last weekend and attended the orientation for the group.
First off the orientation was amazing, the food was great and I got to meet a ton of incredible people. Just some fast facts on some people in my group: One of us manages their own youtube channel with 1 million views, one of us started a computer lab in South Africa, One of us has started developing and has a working prototype of a social media website. Out of the 30 of us who got accepted some of the accomplishments of my peers are quite incredible. The program originated only 6 years ago and already a handful of multi-millionares have started out in our program.
I know what you’re thinking wow MM1, what did you do to get in here? The answer to that question is, I don’t fucking know..
But I digress! That night we had David Singh, the former CEO of a company that he started called Concur. He touched on a wide variety of topics but one two that stood out to me were prompted by student questions. The first topic was on Company downfalls.
Companies like, KODAK, BlackBerry, BlockBuster who dominated the market in their respective fields. If you take a look at the peak of their market share and their subsequent downfall time and time again you will see that their downfall originated years ago. That the company instead of reinventing themselves only tried to keep their current success instead of pushing forward. KODAK during the height, dominated around 80-90% of cameras and actually invented the first digital camera but didn’t release it, Instead Fuji took the design and reinvented the camera. BlackBerry ended up losing to the Iphone and Samsung even though they had actually come out with a similar iphone model but didn’t release it because they didn’t want to undermine their current models. BlockBuster lost to Netflix which actually founded in 1997 and continually reinvented themselves to become the powerhouse that they are today. These concepts apply to our own lives as well business/endeavours that we may start.
The second topic, was prompted by a student asking what was the hardest thing David had ever done. He talked about the time that he had to lay off 300 people. I won’t go into too much detail because my clumsy writing style woudln’t do it justice, but TLDR: All the business stuff is easy, you work hard you persevere and eventually you solve your problem. But laying people off, your fuckign with their lives and thats the hardest thing you’ll ever do when you become successful.
Anyway this blog is becoming a bit longer than I had intended it to be. However, if you guys have book recommendations or have random areas of expertise feel free to PM me and just talk to me about it. I’m lacking in sooo many different areas of knowledge that I’ve been trying to research topics that interest me and topics that may become relevant or help me in the future. I also plan on updating this blog in the future about various field trips or topics that I find interesting. Future ones will also contain pictures!
