Rules For Success? – What Can We Learn From These Successes?
The most important thing about these three projects is that those involved all had a clear set of the objectives they wished to achieve.
In the case of LCAS, it was about trying to get the bank’s costs under control and also to satisfy the Prices and Incomes Board, which had been setup by Harold Wilson’s government.
With Artemis, we’d seen how project management was going and how computers were getting smaller, so a personal system based on a computer in a desk was now feasible. We’d set the secondary objective of selling the company in perhaps three or four years and walking away with about a quarter of a million each.
Respimat to me started as a bit of a punt that I could afford, but gradually became a challenge that would give me a good return on my money.
So the first rule to me in being entrepreneurial is being clear in your objectives, both technical and personal.
In some ways the technical objectives are easier to define, as you wouldn’t be going into a project, where you didn’t have at least some grasp of the technology involved.
Often though, your personal objectives are much more important, as clashes in the partners in these can destroy the best of companies.
I shall deal with these first.
Rules For Success? – Personal Objectives – The F-Words
Fame – Do you want to do this project to become a celebrity and have your fifteen minutes of fame? Like perhaps I am now!
But would you trust someone in a business venture, who wanted to appear on the X-Factor?
Financial – Do you sincerely want to be rich? This was said by a crook called Bernie Cornfeld, who started a vehicle called Investors Overseas Service or IOS.
I would put it this way. If your venture breaks even, and pays you a bit of a salary that’s good. But if it makes a small profit in the end, then that’s a bonus.
Fun – Perhaps this is the most important of personal objectives. If I don’t think my partners in a venture won’t be fun, then I don’t follow it through!
Friendship – I’d rate this second and confirm that with many of the things I’ve done, I’ve made a lot of strong very long-term friendships.
Some have been involved in more than one thing I’ve done, which makes ventures a lot easier.
Feelgood – Are you doing what the future will value.
Family – This is a negative objective, in that you mustn’t put too much strain on your family. I didn’t and was married to a marvellous woman for nearly forty years. But then Celia said she always married me because she knew life wouldn’t be boring. I’m hoping that I’m not letting her down with this talk and boring you stiff!
Rules For Success? – A Few Principles
I’m going to go through a few of the things that I believe are essential to bring a project to a successful conclusion. They’re in no particular order and are very much the prejudices of myself and my friends, I’ve been involved with over the past few decades.
Remember too that the inverse of a rule for success is a rule for failure.
I’m going to start with organisational and financial rules, as if you don’t get these correct and to everybody’s liking, it is unlikely you’ll be able to create a successful idea.
Rules For Success? – A Good Leader
I doubt there has not been a project, in either technology or the wider field, that has come to a successful conclusion, without a real leader in command.
Take this statue of a man in the seventeenth century dress at an important road junction just north of the City of London.
A Statue on Islington Green In London
The statue is of Sir Hugh Myddelton. He was a Welsh goldsmith, clothmaker, banker, entrepreneur, mine-owner and self-taught engineer. He is mainly remembered for the New River, which he built to bring fresh water to the fast-growing city.
The New River is still in use today, despite opening in September 1613. So Sir Hugh was obviously a man of vision and a real leader.
Incidentally, there is a book called 100 Great Welshmen. He’s not in it!
Rules For Success? – Team Size
How many engineers does it take to create success?
Alec Issigonis, the creator of the original Mini, and many others of his generation worked virtually alone or in teams you can count on one hand.
So you could argue for a small team! But then you have a problem in that what happens if one key member falls off their bike and breaks a leg.
I’ve always found a team of perhaps four to six, where you have duplicated and complimentary skills works best.
But then there is a tendency to get too big and pull in friends and others who might have felt left out in the first place, with all the petty jealousies that involves.
A good compromise might be to be a little bigger, but with very small groups of people on particular areas of the development.
Rules For Success? – External Finance
When we created Artemis, we did it totally on our own financial resources, at least until we got going and were able to borrow what we needed commercially.
Venture capital and government funding always come with so much red tape and restrictions, that the idea gets totally strangled.
Perhaps more importantly though, is that your ideas and research may lead in a totally different direction and the external investors will probably want to keep you to the original plan.
I’ve seen both sides of external finance. In one company we had a large external shareholding and they effectively ruined the business, by trying to take the risk out of it. At least though in this case, they bought me out at a good price. But it might have been so much better for all of us.
In another case, I was the external financier and the other partners just carried on as though it was all their money. They would argue it was their idea and I should be grateful to be participating. The company went bust!
I’m not saying external finance never works and in some cases it is absolutely necessary, but if you can do without it, do so!
[Government Funding]
Rules For Success? – A Good Financial Person
Money, both getting and spending it wisely, are the two Achilles’ Heels of any business venture.
With Artemis, as soon as we could afford it, we brought our accountant, Brian, into the business full time. It was one of the most important decisions we made, as he took so much of the load we really weren’t interested in anyway. After we sold the company, Brian went on and repeated his efforts with other companies.
He also remained first friends with us all until his death a couple of months ago.
Every successful venture needs a Brian.
[The Company Joker]
Rules For Success? – A Good Bank Manager
I don’t believe they exist anymore.
Mine and the one we used for Artemis was unique. He had been on the original committee that had identified the need for LCAS, so uniquely he had a hand on our (and especially my!) technical competence.
David was a rogue too, who rose to be the Business Banking Director of Lloyds! But a rogue on the side of the angels and he became a great friend.
He’d be horrified at what has happened to banking in the past few years!
Rules For Success? – Ruthless About Costs
You can never be too ruthless about costs.
I’ve been involved in attempting to rescue several businesses, some of which had excellent technology. Often the cause of the failure was too many expensive cars in the car park of offices they counldn’t afford. But that was just the obvious signs of a company that had little or no cost control.
These days it’s so easy to build up large expense bills. But it’s also easer to cut costs in various ways.
Rules For Success? – Do Your Planning
The tools are out there, but as someone, who laid down a lot of rules in the ares of planning, costing and budgeting, it never ceases to surprise me how incompetent people are when it comes to planning engineering or technical projects. Just look at the farce of the Cambridge Busway.
Cambridge Bus Looking for the Busway
Or the Edinburgh Tram.
The Edinburgh Static Tram
[These projects give engineering a bad name!]
I was part of the team that delivered the first computerised plan to Lloyds Bank, when we were developing Artemis.
[David’s Bounce Back]
We always had a get-out plan too, so that if things went bad, we’d know how to save something.
The Anonymous Widower 