I visited a conference yesterday organised by Freshbusinessthinking.com for entrepreneurs. Lots of speakers provided by a number of interesting talks on how to grow a business and what the recession means to growing companies.
One of chap talked about the transition from a ‘hero’ to a ‘meddler’ and the need for company founders to instead jump to a more visionary role. All well and good when you have a team of a hundred below you but something to keep in the back of the mind for the future. The best speaker was John O’Connell who setup Tibco Software and sold it for $260 million and now is the Chairman for London Wasps rugby club. He talked about the need to fail in business in order to succeed and that starting a company requires a huge amount of dedication (basically his ended up with divorce with his wife). Basically he had been there and got the t-shirt and had gone from founding a company to floating it through to selling it. Unusual for a founder to have done all three and obviously made a few bob in the process.
It was a good day in all and with a number of exhibition stands meant it broke up the day. Don’t know if it is was worth the ticket price but as a guest of one of the exhibitors definitely worth attending.
Leave a Reply