Last month, we invited some of the most exciting and innovative food and drink brands to our sixth SeedMeet at Piper – a round-table forum for entrepreneurs to hear from three key industry experts and discuss the issues and opportunities they are currently facing.
In this session, our three inspirational speakers were: James Bailey, Trading Director of Sainsbury’s; Cassandra Stavrou, co-founder of Propercorn and Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent. Each gave plenty of food for thought.
Richard Reed’s talk, entitled “Ten Things I Know To Be True”, is a must for any entrepreneur – insightful and thought provoking, and definitely lessons learnt.
1. Keep the main thing, the main thing. Do one thing well. Do less, better. Focus.
2. Beware the hidden costs of complexity. Suck up the benefits of simplicity.
3. When recruiting, don’t give anyone the benefit of doubt. Don’t fill the gap, it’s better to wait. Don’t interview people, test them at the job they’ll be doing.
4. Reap the spiritual benefit of firing people. Firing people is the best thing you can do. Fire them – nicely but quickly.
5. Beware the sirens of Facebook and Google. What you are paying for is increasing in cost, but not in effectiveness.
6. Make “the thing” beautiful. We are emotional creatures. We make decisions firstly on emotion.
7. You’re hot or you’re not….BUT ‘hotness’ doesn’t last. Make sure you keep giving people a reason to buy.
8. Be sure you are creating value. Everyone else’s business model is based on taking your money so you need to be clear on how to keep your value.
9. There is profit in ethics. Businesses with strong ethics attract better quality people, who work hard, last longer and often accept being paid less.
10. Don’t take all advice. Almost everyone is wrong, almost all of the time. Use your instinct and your gut – they’re often right.
For more information, please contact:
Yasha Estraikh, Associate Partner
Email: yasha@piper.co.uk
Phone +44 (0)207 727 3842