Legendary Venture Capitalist Bill Gurley On Entrepreneurship And Investing
NorthAmerica
Business
In an interview with Tim Ferriss, legendary venture capitalist Bill Gurley shared his thoughts on entrepreneurship and investing. Bill Gurley is a partner at Benchmark Capital, and he has invested in some of the most successful technology companies in the world, including Uber, Twitter, and GrubHub. Gurley says entrepreneurs should focus on developing a great product and team and not get too caught up in the hype. He also emphasizes the need to have a strong network and be willing to learn from others. His advice to entrepreneurs is to be patient, and disciplined, focus on having the outliers, and have a solid framework for evaluating investments. A common mistake that entrepreneurs make is they develop a technological breakthrough, and they do not spend any time analyzing the industry structure or if go-to-market is even possible. "Strong opinions, loosely held" is a scope that all investors must work within. The job in venture capital is not to find what will not work but to find the outliers. Network effects play an important decision in the company that wins in a winner-take-most industry. The venture can be a pattern recognition job, but having rules that are too rigid could result in catastrophic errors. There is a need to have a large tent, value your network, and not cut off avenues or sources of information. Entrepreneurs and tech investors may have to "unlearn" several things about valuation following the amazing bull market run that began in 2010. The bull market in the last 13 years is no longer the norm; that was a fantasy. Suppose there was a scale of financial sophistication between 1 and 10, and a brilliant person in New York is an 8.5. In that case, the average Silicon Valley person is a 2 in financial literacy. The undervalued competitive advantages in business include network effects, customer lock-in, high switching costs, and performance. Elite entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Tobi Lutke are hyper-curious, have their mental models are more than willing to learn new ones, and are constantly thinking. On restoring a culture of mission-focused companies: How well would the Duke Basketball team perform if Coach K had to prioritize the happiness of his players above the program's goal of winning a championship? Tribal affiliation turns off more brain cells than any other activity. In a dynamic world, companies must continuously incorporate this to remain afloat in their business.
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Tax Inequity Unveiled: The Growing Divide In Kenya's Fiscal Landscape
Africa
Business
Could the government of Kenya be setting the country at a crossroads regarding taxation? Is the government paying the price for the lack of controlled borrowing from the previous regimes? Could we see the people and the policymakers reject some of the tax measures that want to be introduced? There are more questions that need answers before such tax measures are applied. Some of the tax measures that the government seeks to introduce are a 15% withholding tax on payments on the monetization of digital content, a VAT increase on petroleum products from 8% to 16%, an increase in taxation of beauty products, 3% deduction that would go to support affordable housing. With an increase in the digital tax, we could be killing the jobs of the vast youth numbers who engage in digital creation as a form of their day-to-day income: Digital content has the potential for higher growth among the youths as we head into the future which could prove a major area for government revenue. An increase in tax by double percentages would result in a major dysfunction in the consumption arena by consumers who have had to bear the already high cost of living. The government could be crippling more consumers into the below-poverty levels instead of upscaling them from those levels. The government ought to broaden its tax base gradually, into bearable tax levels to encourage an increase in tax revenues to finance the government. The government needs to rely on data to find the impact that such tax measures would have on the economy. With the increase in black tax, the consumers are already overburdened which has seen a decline in the savings level in the country, thus leaving most of the consumers on a hand-to-mouth consumption basis.
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