A Quote by Alfred Lin
It's harder than ever to build an enduring company. As soon as a product strikes a nerve with customers, competitors emerge globally because the costs to start are so low.
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In software and many other online markets, even dominant firms face potential threats because of the low costs for competitors to enter those markets. Threats more easily emerge because of better or newer technologies leapfrogging older ones.
Making an enduring company was both harder and more important than making a great product.
Service standards keep rising. As competitors render better and better service, customers become more demanding. Their expectations grow. When every company's service is shoddy, doing a few things well can earn you a reputation as the customer's savior. But when a competitor emerges from the pack as a service leader, you have to do a lot of things right. Suddenly achieving service leadership costs more and takes longer. It may even be impossible if the competition has too much of a head start. The longer you wait, the harder it is to produce outstanding service.
We have a lot of customers in Japan, but they don't quite get the local content that they always need, so we want to encourage all of our product teams to start thinking globally.
It may be easier than ever to start a product, but building a company is just as hard as its ever been.
Smart companies fail because they do everything right. They cater to high-profit-margin customers and ignore the low end of the market, where disruptive innovations emerge from.
I think one of the things people don't understand is we can build more shareholder value by lowering product prices than we can by trying to raise margins. It's a more patient approach, but we think it leads to a stronger, healthier company. It also serves customers much, much better.
Social media is a great way to get customers. Time is money. If you do this right, it costs money. But social media is great because you put stuff out there and see if it works almost immediately. You can test to see if it will be effective for your company. It's easy if you hit a nerve and talk about something people are interested in. It's easy for them to share with their friends.
The challenge is not just to build a company that can endure; but to build one that is worthy of enduring.
You can build the most important companies in history with a very simple to describe concept. You can market products in less than 50 characters. There is no reason why you can't build your company the same way. So force yourself to simplify every initiative, every product, every marketing, everything you do. Basically take out that red and start eliminating stuff.
Often people say they can't base their strategies on customers because customers make unreasonable requests and because customers vary too much. Such opinions reveal serious misconceptions. The truly outside-in company definitely does not try to serve all the needs of its customers. Instead, its managers are clear about what their organization can and should do for customers, and whatever they do they do well. They focus.
The 'No.1 IT company' isn't by volume, it's in relation to business customers because those are my customers, not the consumer. Who do they view as their most important partner? That's my definition of the 'No.1 IT company.'
Distribution may not matter in fictional worlds, but it matters in most. The Field of Dreams conceit is especially popular in Silicon Valley, where engineers are biased toward building cool stuff rather than selling it. But customers will not come just because you build it. You have to make this happen, and it's harder than it looks.
I think it is going to be very difficult to be a company in silos. I think the game has changed. We won't define our success by looking at the competitors but at how satisfied are our customers, how engaged are our internal stakeholders, and how good is our product pipeline.
Customers are a great way to finance a business for many reasons. First, customer financing is typically non dilutive. They want something from you other than equity in your business. Customers also help you fit your product to the market. And customers will help debug and improve the quality of the product.
Every company's greatest assets are its customers, because without customers there is no company.
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