Luck is very important factor in any success. M. Gladwell in “Outliers” shows very compelling data and stories on how luck is the key component of someone’s outstanding performance. I find that the main conclusion from this book is to concentrate on getting 10000 hours in the exact field you want to succeed.

Yet, I want to stress one important point concerning luck and success which is usually missed when speaking about luck and success. There is one part of luck which is dangerous: you can hardly replicate it. One the one hand this is good, as others cannot replicate it, on the other hand, you yourseld cannot replicate it. Usually you do not need to. You don’t need to replicate 10000 hours you invested into a skill. But there are some things which you might need to replicate. Finding this things and thinking of a back up plan reduces the risk. I.e. you need to understand what part of your current key assets/strength as a organization/person came from luck and which of them you might need to replicate. 

If some key assets you have are based on luck and cannot be replicated easily, you better think of what you would do if you lose them. 

Let me give you an example: you have a wonderful technological idea, but you are not a tech person yourself. Imagine a friend of yours recommends you a person and he is just wonderfully suited for his role. You started to work together. Here I believe you need to realize that you found this great person by mere luck and in case something happens to your relationship with the person, etc. you do not have a replicable process to find another one. This is a one great risk inside your team. Of course, it might never realize. And of course the more you know the person, the more bad times you lived through with this person the lower the risk. But still you need to be aware of the risk and better think of a back up plan (like getting to know more tech people, etc). The same is true with signing a contract with biggest customer because the decision maker was friend of your friend. If this is not the last contract you need to sign, you better create a repeatable model in advance.

One of key moments is that if you lose this asset (i.e. the decision maker retires) you might be moved to a crisis mode. And it is much better to be in crisis with a plan on how to get back on track then without one. 

You do not need to worry about every aspect of your business, only about the key ones esuring all of them are repeatable. 

Very effective innovation process of IDEO can be viewed in this short movie. The key learnings:

1. heavy engagement with all types of customers, tackling the problem from all different angles and customer needs is a start to make revolutionary change vs. some marginal improvement. Importantly, not addressing the needs you think customers have (which is a very good start especially if you have solid data), but going out of the building and actually talking to all kinds of customers who will be touched by the product. This allows to innovate in many directions at once.

2. very fast prototyping and testing ensures you can innovate faster. Importantly, testing actual prototypes vs. ideas with the speed of testing just ideas. That ensures customer and developer talking the same language as for the most of the products it is very difficult to imagine exactly what is meant by the description. This is especially true if the change is revolutionary vs. incremental.

As my life significantly changed after I quitted my job and dived into a startup world, I will start my first blog with answering the following question:

Why I decided to become an entrepreneur?

I always knew I want to start my own business, but I thought that I need an idea, plus a team and also money to start it, so while I had some idea it seemed to small to me, I did not actually look for a team or money either, as the idea seemed small. And one bright morning half a year ago I opened my eyes and I realized that it is not the size of idea that stops me, or absence of a team or money, the only thing which was stopping me was that I was just not ready (you know, like in Matrix “there is no spoon”). And it so happened that day when I have woken up I realized I am ready now. It was not spontaneous. It was coming for months; small incremental changes in quantity at this point became one big change in quality. 

It felt as if I started to see the world differently J I realized that I knew how to turn the idea I though was too small for me (what an arrogance!) into a much bigger one. I also realized that I know people with whom to do it (I love them personally and they have all the qualities required). Finally I realized that I do not need millions to start a business and what I have is enough to prototype.

I want to add that I really loved my job in brand management in Procter and Gamble. If I would choose again I would still go to P&G for its very strong focus on analysis. Never before P&G I have analyzed so much data. In university when I was doing some research I always had the key obstacle as lack of data. In P&G world tons of data is available and the question is which data actually needs to be analyzed. And what incremental data you need and why. I always loved analysis and I felt at ease. P&G was also a superb management school. The experience to work with such a wide team of so different people is invaluable. It was also a real boot camp of planning the projects and executing them, day after day.

Still, the key reasons I decided to start my own business and choose entrepreneurship as a way of life:

1. I realized that I did not take big enough challenge for myself. Whatever I started before (like university, P&G, even MSc psychology) was actually in my comfort zone. I knew that I will succeed. It may be hard, but I will not fail. And I realized that I cannot tell the proper answer to the question “what you consider as your biggest failure”, because actually I have never even was close to failure which for me means that my biggest failure was not to aspire for more, to set goals even higher. So entrepreneurship for me is the goal high enough. 9 out of 10 start ups are dead in the first year. The really successful ones have chances which are even smaller (but needless to say that their returns are high enough to cover all the ones who failed).

2. I realized that what I truly love to do is to develop and bring to life new ideas. That is why I liked my job so much. That is why it took me so long to realize I needed to go. In P&G I had a lot of space for it and I loved doing it. But entrepreneurial environment of consumer internet gave me much more:

a) more freedom for ideas. First of all, I was working on Pampers and diapers are a very technology driven business where technological risk is even bigger then the market risk (all biggest innovations need 5-10 years to come). Internet is different: you can create an idea and execute in several months, not years. The price of failure is quite low, as the development does not cost millions of dollars. You can iterate the product as much as you want. You can test everything (any kind of data for your users, real time tests of every new feature or idea). Secondly, as entrepreneur you can do whatever field you want not just in the product area you currently work, which really feels like the sky is the limit.

b) more freedom in decision-making. I realized that it is very difficult for me to execute the decision if I am not aligned with it. That I love to reason, to discuss and I am prepared to change my mind because what I care most is business. And I decided that learning to execute with excellence and translate down the organization decisions I am not aligned with can reduce my motivation and harm my decision-making skills, so I will not proceed mastering that skill.

c) more freedom in personal life by which I mean a lot. From day-to-day schedule (now I work from where I want to when I want) to, more importantly, long term things (like assignment choice on which you have very moderate influence in P&G). I can now decide on my own projects and not to worry what my next assignment will be. Only the market/consumers will decide what I should deserve ))))

d) bigger need to study and develop. Actually I learn constantly, by doing and a lot by reading, going to lectures and meeting experts. I feel like I know almost nothing (which in P&G I felt I know already almost everything): I constantly learn how test the ideas for product that don’t exist (which is quite different from testing improvements in current products), different business models, raising capital, making valuations, financial planning, technologies, work processes in tech business, role of board of directors, advisory board, etc.

May be all of this sounds like an idealistic crap, may be if I will constantly fail, I will think otherwise, but at least I would know that I tried and I did my best. And I am sure I will learn a lot on the way.