“Build Awesome Teams” Rob Solomon Ex President/COO Groupon

This is an excerpt from Rob Solomon’s (Ex-President and COO Groupon) chat with a group of entrepreneurs at Telluride Venture Accelerator.  Errors and omissions are mine, credit for all the insightful stuff goes to Rob.

About: Rob Solomon has served as President and COO at Groupon during its mega hyper growth phase. He joined Groupon at headcount just crossing 100 and in around 20 months the company grew upto 8000 employees in 45 countries with growth rate of 2500% and IPO valuation of $25 billion. Quite a stint. Prior to Groupon he served as Venture Partner at Technology Crossover Ventures, President and CEO of Side Step that was acquired by Kayak that later got acquired by Priceline at $1.6 billion. He also served as SVP at Yahoo and is at the board of several companies but he describes his best job ever as his first job doing game testing at Electronic Arts.

Rob # Customer acquisition is the most imp thing to focus on after building a great product. If you don’t have a great product you have lost before it started; if you don’t believe in that products greatness that’s even worse.  With a great product and a belief in it, customer acquisition is the single key imp thing that you should work on. You need to acquire them and then you need to constantly engage them. Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing are turning out to be old techniques, perhaps 5 years old. Social Web is the new game; how you leverage different mediums to converge your traffic to build your customer base is the name of the game. As Andrew Chen says, “Software will eat the world”, face book and twitter remains top two mediums for Customer Acquisition and Customer Engagement. Based on who you target, Linkedin comes next for more formal engagements.

Rob # While establishing your venture / startups, you need to build a brand and create the followers.  Single most important factor is the unique original content that you produce. Content remains the king. You need to become a thought leader in your area of expertise. If you are super relevant in your respective space, people would listen. Relevance is easy to get, hard to pursue and harder to maintain. But it’s the most critical thing.

Rob # In order to achieve relevance, entrepreneurs and businesses need to get their focus.  Maintaining your focus is the key. The reality is that you can do one thing really well, may be 2 if you are great. But beyond that, it’s a trap.  Saying NO is the hardest part for entrepreneurs, especially young ones. Startups and early stage companies start accepting too many things that they lose focus. There is a common saying in Silicon Valley, “More companies die out of indigestion rather than starvation”.  You are excited by so many different opportunities coming your way that you lose track of your priorities.

Rob # Build awesome teams. While you are building up the teams, people remain the most important part of your equation. Surround yourself with truly awesome people. This would be the the single most important favor you can give to your self and your organization. Shoot for the best and the brightest; your philosophy should be very crystal about your potential employees.

There are many times you make wrong choices; organizational needs, priorities and playground changes dynamically. You might have hired somebody not anticipating the shift in your organizational strategy and future needs; they may be good at that stage but cannot deliver in changing times as it may be beyond their capacity.  DON’T WAIT to make decisions on moving on with people. Nothing hurts that more than anything else. Try if you can transfer roles, if possible, as far as you are able to control ego’s but move timely.

When you are in hyper growth phase, spend 25-50% of your time in recruiting. Mostly founders spare 5-10% of their time in recruitment, but you need to choose right people. As they say, if you set up the right people, expectations and processes, outcomes will take care of themselves.

Rob # Another key important factor is to have enough CASH. Raise enough but DON’T raise too much. That hurts. Always try to raise money from more than one investor simultaneously. Use the competition in your negotiations with investors. But NEVER LIE to your investors. That comes back too often to hurt badly.

For early stage startups, cash is like oxygen as the people are the real expense. Try to have less number of people but have the BEST. Have the key roles filled, but contract out the partial things. Conserve cash as much as possible. For early stage companies, raise as much as you can. And don’t take anybody’s money. Look for smart money i.e. someone who can add value other than the cash. Bring them as advisors or your brand ambassadors. Make them fall in love with your company or product. But watch out for overly involved money i.e. don’t let the investors start dictating you on routine operations and decisions. Then your thought process stops there.

Angel investment is good, though I always wonder how angels make money. But the ecosystem is established that way. However, there is another concept of Super Angels emerging, which are not exactly angels but VC’s. However, they have covered that up to get more investments done in the seed rounds and early stage companies. As a matter of fact, try to get institutional funding in your seed round. It’s your best bet to lead quickly and smoothly into the second round.

Rob # And lastly, make yourself product centric and user centric. We have a great example of Jeff Bezos; Amazon strives for the Best experience. They give great service to their customers. You have to be most product centric and user centric. If you don’t have the best product, there is no way you can get the buy in of your customers. Strive to create the best experience for your user.

Food Diaper or A Fresh Paper

Food diaper sounds weird, isn’t it? I am sure in your lifetime you must have had a diaper experience, at least with your children if not with yourself. It definitely changed the world of kids and moms, ease for the moms and comfort for the kids, a definite win-win.

But nobody thought of a FOOD DIAPER, until Kavita Shukla went to purchase strawberries and ended up struggling to find fresh berries. Sharing her story at Babson Entrepreneurship Forum 2012, she shared that all the packs she experienced had stale and spoiled strawberries with the juice spoiling the other strawberries.  She connected the issue with a solution she experienced with her grandma’s olden days spices in India as how they cured bacteria in the kitchen.

With the problem stuck in her mind and idea for the solution, her sense of experimentation helped her try out the spices to maintain freshness of vegetables and fruits. As she progressed, she developed a paper with the combination of spices embedded and proved that the life of food items can be enhanced by double of triple.  She named it a FRESH PAPER. Paper absorbs the decayed juices from the food and the spices keep the food fresh by reducing the growth of bacteria.

 

With the solution at hand, Kavita took the challenge of addressing a bigger global problem of reducing the spoilage of food supply that is currently 25%. She started sending the paper to local farmers and gradually to global food banks. Entrepreneurial in spirit, she eventually ended up getting one of the largest food chains in USA, Whole Foods to use the paper throughout their supply chain. After Whole Foods, she never looked back and is busy meeting the massive demand and addressing the challenge of operational and production scalability. Her innovation brought her three patents and furthers three under consideration.

FreshPaper™by Fenugreen is a simple piece of paper that keeps fruits & veggies fresh for 2-4 times longer, organically. Often described as a “dryer sheet for produce,” one small (5″ x 5″) FreshPaper sheet can simply be dropped into a fridge drawer, carton, bag, or container filled with produce. FreshPaper is infused with organic spices and has a distinctive maple-like scent that signals that the paper is active.​​​ Biodegradable, compostable, and recyclable, this award-winning innovation has received international recognition for its potential to change how the world keeps its food fresh.​​

Imagine – A simple solution, to an ignored problem by a teenager taking on a global challenge with a mission for creating high impact. The world definitely needs more innovators like Kavita.

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The BIG Belly – Eliminating the Waste in Waste Collection

Ever thought of first level waste treatment? Yes, we have intelligent dustbins out there, which not only gives you the waste trends but also extra capacity within the same size structure as their dumb counterpart – dustbins.  Reducing waste collection cost, enabling environment friendly waste disposal and controlling emissions and providing first level waste treatment is what BigBelly Solar is all about.

Intelligent concept, an innovation blending technology + social problem + entrepreneurship. The intelligent dustbins provide efficiencies by attacking unnecessary and wasted effort in the collection process. On-demand information powered by solar energy allows for better planning, route optimization and asset management in waste and recycling operations. In high-demand areas, on-site compaction of trash and/or recycling dramatically reduces required pickups. The result is a process optimized to deliver comparable service levels at dramatically lower process cost.  This is why BigBelly Solar’s slogan is: “Eliminating the Waste in Waste Collection.”

BigBelly Solar was founded in 2003 with a mission to reduce fossil fuel consumption through innovative new approaches to old problems. Founder Jim while walking down a Boston street one day and observing a trash vehicle in action – idling at a pick up point, blocking traffic, with smoke pouring out of its exhaust, while litter was still prevalent on the street – Poss was struck by the thought (the necessity, really) that there had to be a better way. Currently, the concept is scaled to all US states and 30 other companies.

But then there is another question: can such innovations be applied in the developing world? Where the cost of human labor is much lower than the solar empowered bin manufacturing. Also, the scale of garbage generation without waste categorization remains an issue. The challenge is, how can we further innovate and produce such technology, which can cover the scale of problem, say in Pakistan.

In Search Of A Great IDEA ?

Ideas are dozen a dime. If you don’t give them wings, they are useless. In order to make them useful, you need to play with them. While playing, there are chances, you don’t like the game. Fair enough; change the game. Start again with a fresh idea. Spin it, dissect it, reach to the core – question it. If you don’t have answers to the questions, you can’t explain it. If you can’t explain it, it’s not clear in your head. If it’s not clear, there is no way you can test it well.  Try again. Think more. Challenge the unknown. Branch out all your questions, and dig out the answers. Assume less and find out the ground reality. Facts are healthy for ideas, assumptions are not. Connect the dots. See if your idea is capable to take off. Don’t forget to determine its capacity; how high it can fly. Still not there; start again. That’s the only way to get to a good idea. Once there, the journey to the great idea starts. All it needs is your blood, sweat and tears spent in the effort of experimentation with your good idea.

And most important of all, you need to start and persist!

Solar Water Filter – Innovation In Evolution

As they say, without possibilities, there is no creativity. So one thing is for sure, there are endless possibilities but only if we can dig them out. Reducing complexity is simplicity, and simplicity is creativity. Creativity has no boundaries and relies mostly on common sense which is rarely common. But those who are blessed use it to the best. Here is an example of a designer making a Solar Water Filter.

Gabriele Diamanti has worked on a prototype for a solar powered water filter that comes under appropriate technologies category. The invention is called Eliodomestico which intends to bring safe drinking model to the families in the developing countries at no operating cost. The concept filter is made from cheap and widely available material with simple technological innovation. It’s made from terracotta, recycled plastic and anodized zinc and can deliver 5 liters of fresh drinking water every day and is expected to be an open project, thanks to the concept of open source.

The distiller is easy to use: in the morning fill the water tank with water from a local source and in the evening collect clean, evaporated and re-condensed water in a portable basin placed underneath the tank. The project is still a prototype with aims for being replicated widely globally through its open adaptation policy.

Read more about the product Eliodomestico.

Legal Restructuring To Support Social Enterprises

If you talk about public interest, you need to make yourself transparent and accountable first. As social entrepreneurship picks up, legal structures are being introduced to support and flourish social enterprises. Moving on from 501 c status registration of non profits, now social enterprises can register as “B Corporations”, an abbreviation for Benefit Corporations. B Corporations are structured in a way where they are not just focused on shareholder benefits but also societal benefit. B Corporation movement in US is both focused on embracing profits and impact and has already been implemented in 5 states and California is next. The biggest benefit for the B Corporations will be to go public and raise capital and create cash incentive for entrepreneurs while meeting all the requirements of a public limited company.

“Benefit Corporation Movement requires privately held B corporations to amend their articles to reflect a commitment to those standards, protecting officers and directors from legal repercussions for their decisions and giving shareholders the power to hold them accountable, by lawsuits if necessary, for protecting the public interest. It also protects customers from deceptive marketing, by forcing corporations to submit public reports that conform to independent benchmarks.” Read More.

“The change we seek is going from ‘me’ to ‘we’“. – Check out how B Corporation matters and how such laws can trigger impactful business possibilities.

Where Sports Drive Social Entrepreneurship

Pakistan is nowhere in the picture, that’s sad. We are trailing, yet again. The world moves on so fast, and yet we try our best not to pick up and give a deaf ear. To put it more appropriately, we simply ignore when it’s the right time and then feel pride in riding the bandwagon of activities and actions world did 10 years ago. Industries, technology, internet, NGO’s, entrepreneurship pick any and you will find the pattern. Social entrepreneurship is next in line; let’s see if we ignore the call to ride this bandwagon as well.

Being a soccer fan I felt it, though I know we are not a soccer nation. But I also know we are a nation full of homeless and shelter less. And compared to those 70, we are definitely in the top 10 yet the green flag is out of picture. Enough of crying, but I was disappointed.

There are 1 billion homeless people in the world today. The Homeless World Cup has a vision for a healthy, abundant, confident world where everyone has a home, a basic need. Homeless World Cup started as an initiative to invent a language to enable homeless people to communicate with each other globally and realized it already exists in form of Football. “The Homeless World Cup, founded by Mel Young – Schwab Fellow of the World Economic Forum, is a unique, pioneering social enterprise that uses sport as a means to promote social inclusion of homeless and marginalized people.” The Homeless World Cup Foundation drives international social development through its network of 70+ national grassroots partners with the support of its “Global Change Makers”. It aims to promote its unique “homeless-to-work” model to policy makers, key influencers, the media and the public, with the vision to shift attitude and policies towards the homeless. Started in 2003 with 18 nations participating, 2011 world cup in Paris features 64 nations through 70 national partners.

Checkout Homeless World Cup site (http://www.homelessworldcup.org) to know more about this interesting initiative.

They ditched high salaries to follow their dreams

A recent heading at Rediff caught my attention, “They ditched high salaries to follow their dreams” and found it worthy of cross posting for Pakistani MBA’s to get inspired. Neha Juneja and Ankit Mathur, both MBA’s from top schools in India straight away chose the path of social entrepreneurship. With a most simple invention of ‘single burner high efficiency cooking stove’ they are running Greenway Grameen Infra, a profitable social enterprise with massive potential to tap into BOP markets of India.

The stove is an inspiration to create low cost replacement for traditional ‘mud chulhas’ that can save 70% fuel and harmful emissions. Market size of households using stoves is 150 million in India. Keeping the potential in mind and understanding of the market dynamics that rural products need not be cheap and substandard, they smartly ‘co-create’ their products with direct inputs from their end users in rural villages making the product more quickly adaptable.

For a complete story, check out Rediff coverage.

For more information, check out their website: http://grameeninfra.blogspot.com

Want to give wings to your idea – Apply to Unreasonable Institute

Do you have an idea that you have been desperate to implement? Have you done a prototype or a pilot run for it? Is it fulfilling any social or environmental need and holds significant impact? If yes, your are almost eligible to apply for the 2nd batch of The Unreasonable Institute. Quickly check out the Eligibility Criteria.

Don’t want to be labeled as “Unreasonable”? Does it sound a bit awkward? Well believe me, you will be struggling hard to get yourself called “The Unreasonable Fellow”, once you understand what The Unreasonable Institute can do for you. You can fly, and fly high while making your ideas/ventures a growing reality. All you need to do is to Apply.

Want to know more about what TUI is all about? Well they claim they accelerate the world’s most unreasonable entrepreneurs. I will add: they will give you a roller coaster ride to practice your entrepreneurial skills even before you get selected. That’s a personal experience of an Unreasonable Finalist who was NOT selected as a fellow. The Unreasonable Fellows can add 100 times more to it who actually attended the institute.

It’s official, the Unreasonable Institute is on the search for the most brilliant, innovative, and ambitious early stage high-impact entrepreneurs in the world! Those who will be remembered by future generations as having defined progress in our time.

The second Annual Unreasonable Institute will unite 25 exceptional early-stage entrepreneurs for 8 weeks in the summer of 2011 in the beautiful, entrepreneurial city of Boulder, Colorado. Over the course of the Institute, Unreasonable Fellows will work and live with 60 world-class mentors, pitch their ventures to investors in five entrepreneurial meccas across the United States, learn from premier consulting organizations, and gain unprecedented levels of international exposure.

I will end with what they end – usually: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable persists in adapting the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man (& woman).” – George Bernard Shaw

Abdul Razak Dawood – A Story of Thought Leadership followed by Action Leadership

Humans are the greatest source of inspirations; at times ordinary, at times extra-ordinary. They are all around us, only if we can pick up or learn from them. Inspirations, ideally, are like chain reactions. You get inspired and you inspire others and the reaction goes on. But then again, inspirations start from somewhere. As noted by someone, “There never was a great soul that did not have some divine inspiration”. Surely, those are the few who actually kick start the chain reaction.

Observing people have remained a great way of learning that I have thoroughly enjoyed. One of those learning aid is the Founder and Chairman of Descon Engineering Group, Mr. Abdul Razak Dawood. In case you are one of those who never heard about Descon Group, it’s the largest construction and engineering company from Pakistan positioning itself rapidly in the global markets.

Descon Quick Recap: In less than 3 decades, Abdul Razak Dawood transformed DESCON from a 1977 startup with 4 engineers to more than 1600 engineers and professionals (employee strength reaching 40,000) globally competitive engineering company based out of Pakistan. Today, Descon has 15 businesses in engineering, chemicals and power under their portfolio with 0.9 million man hours/year of engineering capacity and 72 million man hours/year of construction capacity. Some call this a vision, but there is someone definitely more than a visionary over here.

Portfolio in brief: Abdul Razak Dawood served as the former Federal Minister for Commerce, Industries and Production, Government of Pakistan for four years. He is the Chairman Pakistan Business Council and Managing Director of Descon Engineering Limited and six other private companies. His former corporate positions included, CEO Dawood Hercules Chemicals and Managing Director Lawrencepur Woolen & Textile. He has been on the board of various corporate giants such as ICI Pakistan, KSB Pumps, United Refrigeration Ltd, PIA, & State Bank of Pakistan. He taught at Department of Business Administration, University of Punjab and is the Member Syndicate, the University of Punjab as well as member Senate, University of Punjab. Mr. Abdul Razak Dawood has been an active philanthropist and at present he is the Rector, Lahore University of Management Sciences to which his family has donated generously; Vice Chairman, Board of Governors National Management Foundation; Member, Board of Directors Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, Trustee CARE Foundation and Member, Board of Directors NUML College. Mr. Dawood is a BSc. Mining Engineering from England and MBA from Columbia University, USA.

I heard about him for the first time when I applied to LUMS and met him for the first time at my convocation while he handed me over my degree. Little did I know that in the years to come I will be lucky enough to be directly mentored by him and have him on our board of advisors for Kualitatem. Though I have got a chance multiple times to hear random briefs from his valuable experiences but never got a chance to hear his life story, until recently at a TIE gathering. Abdul Razak Dawood has no doubt transformed his thought leadership into action leadership and has institutionalized it to a greater extent producing stream of future leaders. There is a lot one can learn from him and his experiences.  Here are some important notes I managed to jot down during his talk and thought to share and contribute in that chain reaction.

Abdul Razak Dawood [1]: “Ladies and gentle men, assalam-o-alykum. Today I have been asked to give my story about my experiences in business, of being involved in education and basically being an entrepreneur. But I must say that usually I feel a little uncomfortable talking about myself and what I have done. In today’s talk I will spend some time talking about my career, but a little bit more time on strategic decisions, visions, values and qualities required for being an entrepreneur.”

[2] “I graduated from Columbia University and landed back in Pakistan in October 1968 after 18 years. Got married within 3 weeks and then issue came within the family; where should they park this young lad who just came back from America. Lawrencepur, district Attock was decided for me and I gathered my dreams, passion and commitment and went to Lawrencepur where I simply fell in love with the place. I loved the community life, loved the people, I loved the opportunities. It was magnificent. Not because it was easy, but it was challenging and here I was ready to face them while being in the trenches. I was welcomed by a strike letter on my first day on my desk. As I struggled to set things straight over the months, I introduced a new brand for ladies called “Layla”. While it was rejected by big brands like HKB, Bombay Cloth House etc. we ran a TV commercial and bang; it was a hit. Next, we advertised Layla for PKR 80,000/- budget over 4 months despite the strong resistance from my father. The results changed the world and the next time around it was my father who urged to raise the budget for advertisement.

Take away from Lawrencepur experience: Marketing was not understood properly and there was no market segmentation or product differentiation done ever at Lawrencepur. In order to sell, one needs to understand the pulse of the market first. I used to walk down Anarkali with my father for hours and used to listen to the shopkeepers, the customers, their demands, likes and dislikes in order to set our strategy. And an entrepreneur’s job is exactly the same.

[3] “I loved the job and Lawrencepure and gelled in the environment quickly. But “Man Plans, God commands”. 1972. Time for change came out of the blue. Family had a massive problem putting up Dawood Hercules as a merger where Dawoods and Hercules were fighting and couldn’t solve the problem. Senior members of Dawood family forced me to attend the board meeting and there and then made me the resident director of Dawood Hercules. From rural I moved to the urban. From the large canvas that I was working on and loving every minute of it, I moved to the narrow canvas inside Dawood Hercules.

Here it was different; learning about corporate struggle, board structure, articles of association and lot of agreements. Dawood Hercules had no problems of marketing, no problems of production and no problems of cash flow. It was a problem of different mindsets. Dawood and Hercules could not match cultures of local company with an American multinational. This ugly problem took 1.5 years to be solved by winning the hearts of Americans (Hercules) and maintaining confidence of family members (Dawoods).

I became the CEO. There were no problems in Dawood Hercules unlike Lawrencepur, so I got opportunity to learn engineering. Being 29 years old among the old and experienced engineers working in the plant I started learning the machinery as well as plant operations. I had no idea what was in store for me but I kept learning. An important day came when a Siemens machine busted and we called an engineer from Germany. He said the machine cannot be fixed and we need to get a new one which may take upto six months to be delivered. That was hard, shutting the plant for 6 months. We called the local champions, who understood the machine, committed to make a fix without shutting the plant and they did it. For the next six months the plant ran beautifully.”

Take away from Dawood Hercules: “That was the day when I said, I have faith in my Pakistani engineers. It’s about the judgment call that few can take and few cant. Pakistani engineers did it clearly indicating their competency.”

[4] “Winds of change in the family started and the family could not stay as it was. I could see it coming and about to break. On 21^st April 1981 I was finally asked to go, so I packed up my bags and moved out of Dawood Hercules.

[5] “1981: I joined Descon Engineering (whose foundations were laid in Dec 1977), with 4 engineers, 5000 sq feet of office space, high level of energy and commitment and the promise of tomorrow to fight it. The starting point for any entrepreneur is your own inner most desire to do something, desire to go unknown paths and desire to take risks. That’s what we did. At that time what we formed was Descon Engineering Services & CONstruction Limited abbreviated DESCON.

Take away from early days at DESCON: “Do entrepreneurs have a fair idea about their ideas, company or their future when they start? NO WAY. It’s way too vague. You don’t need a brilliant idea or a brilliant product to start it. Did Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard did it? They didn’t. Look at the founder of SONY, his first product was a rice cooker; GE, P &G, Motorola, read any of the stories and in their early days they hardly knew what they wanted. And neither did DESCON. We just had a vague idea. Whole thing we did had was a searching mind, a desire to be different, a heart full of hope, a passion to do something and commitment to rope the extra mile.”

[6] “We kept on fishing for the first few years. Some call it the garage stage, I call it fishing. Nothing is too small. Our first job came at Havellian for electrical wiring and we took it to open up our electrical department. Soon we realized, consultancy is not the way to go and we left. And the two senior most engineers left the company as we left the consultancy business; it was a setback. As we started to settle down, the issue came for how do you want to dream about the company. ‘What type of policies you want to adopt, short term or long term? You want to go local or global?’ We were very clear that we will follow the long term strategy and take Descon Engineering, Power and Chemicals all global. And this is one of my issues with the Pakistani entrepreneurs as well. They simply don’t seem to understand the real benefit of a long term strategy. In the long term you gain more. If you look at the 50’s and 60’s old business models of textile, ghee and rice; they stand nowhere now”

Take away: “1) Don’t go for short term strategies, go for long term. 2) Don’t think local go Pakistan Plus Plus. ”

[7] “Dreams and Aspirations: How do you dream is how you want to play it. That’s another problem with Pakistanis. We don’t dream enough; we day dream a lot. We don’t dream greatness. If you can’t dream it you can’t do it. Nobody is ever poor because he doesn’t have the capital. He is very poor who doesn’t have the vision. Another thing, do you have to be a charismatic leader to be an entrepreneur? No. Research has shown that you don’t need to be charismatic, high profile and strong personality to be a successful entrepreneur. In fact when you reach the final stages of entrepreneurship, being strong personality becomes a liability, being charismatic becomes a liability. In the start of the business, charisma and personality plays a role. Things get done because of the persona. But organizations built to last needs systems (processes and procedures). They need not to be driven by entrepreneurs as they grow.

Take Away: “1) Dream and Dream A LOT. 2) Fast Forward 20 years into your business, if the entrepreneur is still on the driving seat there is something wrong. Very much wrong.”

[8] “In September 1981 we landed a fantastic job in National Refinery Karachi. Descon went after it and Alhamdulillah we won the job. People said, don’t do it, friends said don’t do it, mentors said don’t do it as it’s too big for a company of 8 engineers. We had the passion, we had the drive, we took it and Alhamdulillah we did it.

Take Away: “People later commented and said we were smart. But infact, I would say the hand of God was with us. I have a strong Faith in it.”

[9] We hunted a maintenance job in Saudi Arabia at SAFCO managed by a great Pakistan Ahmad Kidwai. I went on to take Descon International. Next we went to Abu Dhabi; we made a bid against a Spanish company. And we bid very vey low, infact 30 % below the next bidder. When I went to meet the Arab whose name was Hasan Salman …,

Hasan Salman: ‘I know why you are here. You made a bid that is very low and now you want to exit.’

Me: ‘I don’t know if I have bid that low, but I am here to ask you to give this job to us.’

Hasan Salamn: Surprised. ‘Will you be able to make money’

Me: ‘NO’

Hasan Salman: Further surprised, “You still want a job’

Me: ‘Yes, I want the job’

He gave it to us and we did a good job for 16 days. Went back to Hasan Salman …,

Hasan Salman: Appraised. ‘Now you are prequalified for every single job that comes up at ADNOC’

Me: ‘Thank you. That’s what I wanted.’

Hasan Salman: ‘Did you make money out of that job.’

Me: ‘Well in the start I told you we won’t, but actually we broke even.’

Hasan Salman: ‘But why did you want to lose money in the first place.’

Me: ‘Hassan Salman, we believe in long term. I was actually buying my entrance fee to get into ADNOC.’

Asan Salman: Smiled. ‘OK. You are In now.’

Take Away: “Believe in long term. One job after another and we kept rolling fast.  1987 into Oman, 1990 into Iraq.1999 into Qatar. 2000 into Japan. 2001 into Canada, 2008 into Kuawait”

[10] “When you think about it from the lowest stages of the family to the highest stages of the long term. There is no right answer; it’s your own individual wish, your desire how you feel at the bottom of your heart. It is YOUR answer that why you are on God’s good earth. There are many many wealthy families around the world. But there are very few who created institutions to built the last. You need to ask yourself a fundamental question, “Do you want to be the time teller or a clock builder”. A time teller announces his position frequently but a clock builder works silently and persistently repairing and improving his creations. At Descon, we were very clear. We wanted to be the clock builders. Our purpose is to give returns to our shareholders but also helping our society in shape of LUMS, NUML College and CARE Foundation. Our purpose is that the people outside should know that a Pakistani company can operate professionally. Our purpose is to uphold the name of corporate Pakistan. We want to build the institution built to last from generation to generation. We all have a date with destiny, and at DESCON our destiny is to build that institution. And I hope before I leave this world, inshAllah I will go on that date.”

Take Away: “I conclude by saying that entrepreneurship is not a trip, it’s a journey. But more important, make it a life time adventure, an adventure of greatness for the benefit of your family and this wonderful country of ours. When people tell you are successful, my reply is, ‘I don’t know’. I am right now in the middle of the battle, cannons firing, infantry moving and the heat of the battlefield still ON. Then there is a question about success. How do you define success? Is it the size of your balance sheet? Is it the quality of your heart or the goodness you brought to society?  Is success being a good husband or a good father? I would say it’s much more than all this. For me it includes 1) being a responsible member of society. 2) Living the way Almighty Allah Tala wanted us to live as defined in his code of conduct. Because ultimately we will all judged by HIS standards, not by our standards. 3) In 2075, if the organization is still flourishing and executives are still worried about challenges coming up in next 100 years. To me, the size of balance sheet is No criteria for determining success. It hardly matters when you talk about success. I thank you all for listening to my story so patiently. If as a result of this address, the spirit of entrepreneurship kindles in one heart or if the entrepreneur moves up the value chain to decide to create the institution built to last then all the time we have spent today, together, will all be well worth it.”

Some more interesting collection of facts about Abdul Razak Dawood

Childhood: He migrated from India to Pakistan with his family. He was six years old at that time with memories of tents and sea of people at where Quaid-e-Azam’s mazaar is right now. He just had a one year of schooling from Pakistan before he was sent to England with his brother and cousin. He enrolled in a public school called Eshton Hall in Yorkshire Dales in 1950. England was slowly coming out of the war. The life was tough and sports were a part of everyday life. Independence and strength is what he got out of the tough time spent in early childhood in England.

Life Changing Experience: First life changing experience was in an English Public School. He was not so good in academics due to his love for sports. But then there was a paradigm shift when he changed the way he used to think. It was when his O-Levels results were not so good. While traveling in a bus, he had a flash in his mind. That flash made him decide to take studies seriously and since then he had been meticulous about work and learning. Though sports still remained an essential part of his life. His second life changer was when he went to US for MBA. With a wealth of knowledge, people passionate about business, where ideas and concepts galore, it was a whole new and exciting world that shaped up his desire for business.

Personalities Who Inspired: Historic – Napolean, Salahuddin Ayubi, Taimur Lang.  Contemporary – Jack Welch, E.I. DuPont and Lou Gerstner.

Creating Lahore University of Management Sciences: In 1984, the idea of LUMS was conceived when Syed Babar Ali at a meeting discussed about the need for high quality business graduates required to support and grow Pakistani Economy. Razak Dawood had taught MBA for 8 years in IBA – Punjab University, was fully responsible for the curriculum and the course and aware of the need for a high quality platform producing business graduates. He matched PKR 2.5 million contributed by Syed Babar Ali and developed the charter in March 1985 for an institution built to last. First batch started in September 1985.