Mark Littlewood is that rare beast, a real connector. He has the invaluable skill of bringing a disparate, but talented group of people together in a way that generates wealth - whether that be though ideas, contacts or business deals. Ignore an invitation to a Business Leaders Network event at your own risk.
Running events is a stupid, stressful business and quite a lot of the time I don’t know why we do it. I tell myself we do it because we can play a part is sharing great ideas that help people run better businesses and have a better life in the process.
We just got this short compilation video of some of the people who came to the BLN CEO Tales event with Eric Ries, The Lean Startup in London. It reminded me that what we are doing is worthwhile. Thank you!
If you know any of the people in the video, please let us know in the comments so we can credit you.
This is probably a really good time to register here so you are the first to hear about our other events. We are just about to announce something in Cambridge on 20th February that might have a similarly profound effect on your life…
Three things caught my attention in the news this week that made me think.
Apple made masses of money. (Hat tip every single person on Twitter. Every tech blog in the world. Really, really well done for spotting that).
Patagonia, the outdoor clothing company becomes one of California’s first Benefit Corporations. (Hat Tip the excellent and occasionally hirsute Mike McDerment of Freshbooks).
In a blog comment on a spectacular display of numberbation from TechCrunch, Percy Chow notes with respect to Apple.
“I never thought I’d say this but Apple is a prime example of corporate greed.
How so?
1. Apple does NOT pay it’s stock holders dividends.
2. Apple has NOT given any significant amount of cash to Charity.
3. Apples war chest is nearly $100 billion. In context, the UN said $30 billion would END world hunger.
Even though I am surrounded by Apple products paid for by me, or my company… I’ve only recently become disillusioned with Apple because of these 3 things.”
Apple currently has a $97.4 billion of cash and cash equivalents. $64 billion of which is offshore. As $64 billion man, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer explained in their earnings call, it would cost money (taxes) to bring this into the US. Duh.
Apple is playing by the rules that the market sets, and winning.
Patagonia, the outdoor clothing company, is changing its company status, “gives directors legal cover to consider social and environmental missions over financial returns.” Currently, shareholders are able to sue companies that don’t maximise profit. Any public company that wants to pursue true environmental, sustainable or social programmes (as opposed to just putting some corporate bollocks at the bottom of your email saying please consider the environment before printing this out), could be sued by shareholders. (Patagonia is a private family held company so doesn’t need to worry so much about class action law suits.)
Patagonia gets to play by its own rules, and wants to play a part in changing the rules for everyone’s benefit.
Bill Gates, as an individual, has the potential to be the greatest philanthropist of all time. A man on a mission to solve some of the world’s biggest problems in healthcare. The phenomenal success of his business has given him the freedom to pursue an incredible dream but he is giving his own money away to do so.
He is applying some of the rules of the corporate world to do what he believes in. He is in a very rare, very responsible position, that he has assumed for himself. Most billionaires don’t.
Something is wrong with the system and people are trying to change it - this is an interesting article from Bloomberg on legal structures for companies that want to change the system. With the number of lawyers cited in the article though, you know this is going to be an expensive business!.
When Eric Ries was in the UK. We talked a little bit about his idea for a third market that aligns the long term interests of shareholders, customers, employees and the rest of the world. He certainly doesn’t believe it is an easy problem to solve, but in 50 years time, it may be the thing that he is remembered for.
Thanks to Frugal Dad for the nice graphic and note. Nicely put…
The first name in wealth for most people is Bill Gates. So imagine how surprised we were to learn that Bill Gates isn’t even close to the wealthiest man in the world — because he’s given almost half of his money to charity. It is even more relevant recently because today he pledged to give $750 million to the global AIDS fund. Through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates is projected to save the lives of 7.6 million children under 5 by 2019 through his support of international vaccinations and healthcare alone. Check out some more statistics and see why we think Bill Gates is better than Batman.
If you are looking to start a business, you would be insane not to spend 1 minute watching this neat little video about the Springboard Accelerator programme. This is a 90 day, hugely intense, programme of beasting, mentoring, coaching, coaxing, network supercharging, pizza eating, coffee drinking and get your sh*t together planning.
One of these is definitely about Springboard.
Deadline for entry into the next programme, to be held in London, is 29th January.
This is what happened to the first crop of Springboard Alumni… (more…)
I read this book because the guy who wrote it, Mike Frankel, dropped me a line after he saw some tweets about the Lean Startup talk Eric Ries gave last week. It is available as a free eBook, took less than 10 minutes to read and made me laugh. Of course the premise that an absurd app might take off in any way is ridiculous but suspend your disbelief…
“I’m stunned that Apple would approve my ridiculous software. My product now joins an exclusive brotherhood of 600,000+ apps. I pull out my iPhone, click on the app store, and search. There it is! The icon, which I originally dismissed as amateurish, looks remarkably professional surrounded by Apple’s sleek store and a $2.99 price tag. So much to do! Ok, let me pull up the marketing strategy I wrote a few weeks ago.
1) Get in Apple Store.
2) Tell your Facebook friends.
Hmm. I thought I wrote a more robust plan than that.”
A guest post from Anton Clay at 21Apps about our CEO Tales event, The Lean Startup in London with Eric Ries.
If you want to share something you feel passionate about and think it might also be of interest to the 50,000+ monthly readers of our blog, get in touch…
I don’t work at a web startup, we don’t make products and we’re not the usual kind of company you’d find at an event like BLN’s Lean Startup evening with Eric Ries last Monday.
To justify my ‘presence’ here, let’s start with some background – I work at 21apps (www.21apps.com) we are a small UK based consulting organisation with one aim and that is to ‘inspire people to change the way they work’. We do this through consulting, training, mentoring and workshops and although our current focus is largely around working with our clients to implement Microsoft SharePoint effectively to support organisational goals (not just dump the technology in), we also work with non-technology clients and our aspirations are to ‘inspire everyone to change the way they work’. (more…)
For those of you that can’t wait for the video of Eric’s Lean Startup talk on Monday, here are the slides from Eric’s talk including some great bonus material including the, ‘Myths of Lean’.
Massive thanks to – DFJ Esprit, TechCity, Brown Rudnick, Fidelity Growth Partners, Microsoft BizSpark, Red Gate and Springboard - for making such an excellent evening possible.
Our next public event is MiM2012, a one day forum for corporate buyers and entrepreneurial sellers of mobile technologies. March 22nd 2012. Early Bird tickets available until January 31st. More info…
If you run a conference and ever get someone called Betsy Weber registering, make sure she brings a camera. Her photography is brilliantly atmospheric (and this was a business event!). Flickr photos tagged BLNLean.
Drop us a line with your write up if you did one and we will add it here.
Massive thanks to – DFJ Esprit, TechCity, Brown Rudnick, Fidelity Growth Partners, Microsoft BizSpark, Red Gate and Springboard - for making such an excellent evening possible.
Our next public event is MiM2012, a one day forum for corporate buyers and entrepreneurial sellers of mobile technologies. March 22nd 2012. Early Bird tickets available until January 31st. More info…
This short and fascinating talk below from Nick Lansley (Head of R&D, Tesco) reveals the real reasons why Tesco entered mobile, their experimental approach and how they increased sales and profit as a result.
Lessons from the High Street over the past weeks show that mobile is where retail is heading and that the early adopters of this channel are emerging as winners. Dozens of brick-and-mortar retailers are going bankrupt whilst the value of mobile transactions in retail is expected to more than double to $200bn globally in 2012 (Juniper Research).
Nick will be sharing his insights about where retail is winning in mobile and where retailers can learn from other industries at our forthcoming MiM Forum 2012 (22nd March, London). If you are in retail and want to know how mobile can make your business money then you need to be at the MiM Forum. Listen to stories of success and more interestingly – failure, join in discussions around real, actionable opportunities in mobile and network with people who are experts by dint of being ‘doers’, not ‘talkers’.
We record and share the talks, but the real value of MiM Forum comes from the people you meet on the day. MiM 2012 is a gathering of the buyers and suppliers of mobile technology that are changing the way business is done.
A limited number of Early Bird tickets are still available – you can buy them here. You will need to be quick though – we completely sold out last year. As with all BLN events, if you attend and don’t feel that you got value, we will refund the full price of your ticket.
Pictures from the BLN CEO Tales – Eric Ries, The Lean Startup. Put your pictures on Flickr and tag them BLNLean to share.
Special thanks to Betsy Weber for the good ones.
Massive thanks to our supporters - DFJ Esprit, TechCity, Brown Rudnick, Fidelity Growth Partners, Microsoft BizSpark, Red Gate and Springboard - for making such an excellent evening possible.
