Sometimes you have to test the depth of the river with both feet

This is my last week at Stanford Seed (https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/seed). As with my previous role at L’Oréal, this too was a startup situation where I found myself on the first day at work as the only employee with a very big canvas to paint and create a new future.

I will admit in this instance there was an American chap, a friend of Stanford, this meaning an Alum of the University, who volunteered to come and support the setting up. He was interesting in many ways and I will not elaborate. The only thing I will say to give some context is he told me that he had a cat. That cat found him as it came to the window of his flat and it spoke to him (yes, you can open your eyes wide) and from then on he and that cat became soul mates, having many conversations. He would try to share some of what he felt were the more profound tête-à-têtes, but the glazed look in my eyes each time he’d try eventually discouraged that. Against this backdrop, I very quickly realized his tenure assisting the set up was going to be short lived. He did try to go back with the cat to America by the way, but the cost of a business class air ticket on Emirates put a stop to that possibility.

One of the things I really want to talk to today is about opportunity - how opportunity presents itself and how sometimes we see it and do something and other times we don’t see it, and its lost forever. In the last 6 years I have had the incredible opportunity to meet and work with remarkable individuals who saw opportunities and made them amazing business ideas and indeed businesses. I never ceased to be staggered by the chutzpah of some of the business leaders who came on the Stanford Seed Transformation Program. There are many businesses, over 200 from across 13 countries in sub-Sahara Africa, each built on an opportunity that was seen and which an individual was bold enough to pursue, creating an entity that allowed others also have opportunities to better their lives - the others being employees or customers. Having always dreamed of being an entrepreneur, it was a wonderful time living vicariously through them.

I could say I was super human and did it all by myself (right! as if that is even possible). None of the incredible impact achieved https://docsend.com/view/rjj9dfq8ag7ny78p would have been possible without the team at the Seed Global office at the Stanford Graduate School Business or the team that joined me at the East African office to deliver this, an image of the latter being cool, posted at the end of this blog. I remain grateful to them for allowing me to be me. For the leadership, competence, commitment and reliability they brought to the table so I could live out my goal of making myself redundant. Thank you.

The thing is with starting something, we are usually advised to start small or indeed do a pilot. There is an African proverb that says “You do not test the depth of the river with both feet”.

All very wise and good. However, one lesson I’ve learnt in the last 6 years in particular is that sometimes you have to go the whole way when you believe in the opportunity. When you know you have to be first to explode it and leverage first mover advantage. There is an expression Go big or Go bust or something? The most successful businesses did just that. They did not test the temperature of the water with their big toe. I’m really sorry for overdoing the maxims and proverbs but I am trying to be colorful in my descriptions.

Neither did I go small with the choices of the team or in the choices of the business leaders who came on the program. We went big in the choice of leaders, in the choice of businesses, in the choice of countries and in the choice of helping everyone make the most of every opportunity. With that I am pretty confident that in going big we will never go bust and it made sense to test the depth of the water with both feet!