{"id":632,"date":"2012-03-17T22:21:25","date_gmt":"2012-03-18T03:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steinvox.com\/?p=632"},"modified":"2012-08-11T12:15:04","modified_gmt":"2012-08-11T17:15:04","slug":"entrepreneurial-wisdom-from-jeff-holden-the-groupon-global-commerce-operating-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/entrepreneurial-wisdom-from-jeff-holden-the-groupon-global-commerce-operating-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Entrepreneurial Wisdom From Jeff Holden – The Groupon Global Commerce Operating System"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Groupon-G-Logo\"<\/a>Friday night, Jeff Holden, Groupon SVP of Product Development Shared the Groupon vision for the world\u2019s Commerce Operating System<\/em>. The strategy is so much more than daily deals<\/em>, extending into yield management<\/em> for merchants, a platform for loyalty and retention<\/em> to reward buyers and increase B2C stickiness, and of course, massive customer-centric experience<\/em> capabilities around consumer\u2019s social graph.<\/p>\n

Vision for a Groupon Global Commerce Operating System<\/h3>\n

Jeff shared concepts and direction for how near field communications (NFC) and other mobility identification features will enable consumers to increase choice, reduce cost, and increase satisfaction through user-centric and self-directed decisions based on perfect market information.\u00a0 Through the two economic levers of discovery and price, consumers and merchants will be able to match each other\u2019s needs to mutual benefit.\u00a0 Jeff also shared how Groupon\u2019s focus is to satisfy merchant\u2019s fundamental marketing needs: 1) to attract customers, 2) optimize business yield over time, and 3) retain customers through rewards, user-customized offers and premium deals.<\/p>\n

To put it mildly, the energy in the room from Jeff\u2019s style and presentation content was so high; he crammed, stuffed, crow-barred more than I could take notes on in the time available before the next point. \u00a0I thought I was a 12 on the 1 to 10 scale of passion\/energy\/talk scale, but Jeff puts me to shame, somewhere 2X off the chart. Jeff shared more about the world\u2019s commerce operating system, in terms of how it leveraged the markets, built satisfaction out of real-time, location-based and ever-increasingly perfect information.\u00a0 He predicted how this was going to change business, supply chains, and more.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t get it all down. Suffice it to say, Groupon is fundamentally a market-driving company. Groupon is most certainly not a market-driven company, following the market! \u00a0I suspect that the changes we will all experience will come sooner, rather than later.<\/p>\n

9 Points of Wisdom for Entrepreneurs<\/h3>\n

The majority of Jeff\u2019s talk focused on words of wisdom for entrepreneurs and innovators that he learned while at Amazon.com and Pelago; two companies he worked prior to Groupon.\u00a0 The \u00a0room was full for the ILLINOIS Executive MBA Innovative Leadership Speaker Series<\/em> event at the University of Illinois downtown Chicago campus location.<\/p>\n

Minimize Regret <\/strong>\u2013 Typically, this means regret of omission, Jeff shared.\u00a0 Rarely do you find someone saying I regret taking a path, learning or doing something.\u00a0 When given the opportunity, take it, don\u2019t hesitate, jump in and go. Doing so carries you forward, and tempers your spirit for the next opportunity.\u00a0 Build a habit of taking risk and capitalizing on opportunity, and you will minimize regret.<\/p>\n

Be Frugal <\/strong>\u2013 Nothing for a startup or entrepreneur is as important as being frugal. This mindset ensures so much, whether a bootstrapping team who needs to eat, or if you are managing $2 million of a venture capitalist\u2019s money. The less you spend on getting traction (see the next item), the longer your out-of-cash curve can last and the more you will benefit in the long run.<\/p>\n

Get Traction FAST<\/strong> \u2013 The single most important metric for any startup or entrepreneur is to get customers. There\u2019s no such thing as beta, it\u2019s your R1. Get customers on board, added to your database, using the minimum viable product<\/em> and rapidly develop additional features to retain and respond to those early (adopter) customers. The company that develops the perfect product, then launches, is the company that loses. Launch early, release updates often. Traction also is the metric that investors will value the most. Traction helps you retain the greatest ownership\/control\/equity in the company, and as well, attracts the best talent.<\/p>\n

Be Bold<\/strong> \u2013 Jeff shared that it\u2019s easy to do the daily deal<\/em> that is why there are competitors doing that.\u00a0 But, for success, you must be bold, do the messy stuff that no one else will think of.\u00a0 It\u2019s the messy, complex, and difficult innovation challenges that set the course of your strategy and ultimately differentiate you from your competition.\u00a0 Startup strategy, in order, 1) assemble the easy stuff<\/span>, 2) take the lead<\/span>, 3) sell and get traction<\/span>, 4) boldly innovate<\/span> and 5) extend your lead<\/span>.\u00a0 Repeat<\/span> steps 3, 4, and 5, aggressively.<\/p>\n

Optimize for the Long Term<\/strong> \u2013 This is Jeff\u2019s word of wisdom around failure innovation<\/em>. As a start-up or growing company is being bold<\/em>, they must continuously plant seeds for the future, ideas that must be tried of which 80% may fail. It is the 20% that extends the lead. Internal culture must allow and reward failure in order to optimize for the long term. There is no room for negative antibodies in a company\u2019s culture, or as Jeff puts it: \u201cyou must overcome institutional no<\/em>\u201d as a response to ideas.<\/p>\n

The Press is in the Entertainment Business<\/strong> \u2013 Jeff had some great stories on this around Amazon, Bezos, and his experience there; but, energy spent worrying about what the press is saying about you, is energy lost and misdirected from doing what you say you are going to do \u2013 generally proving the press wrong, and doing it sooner. Jeff did mention that it\u2019s imperative that leadership be transparent with the organization. To build trust, employees must never learn from the press what they should have learned from their leaders. This factor of culture separates\u00a0mediocre <\/em>from really great <\/em>companies.<\/p>\n

Obsess Over Customers, Not Competitors<\/strong> \u2013 In the world of the internet, we are approaching perfect information. Never has there been so much information available to consumers and companies. If you follow your competitors, you are not a leader and you are not following your own unique differentiating strategy. Worse, you are not focused on the specific needs of your customers – which invites them to leave for a better experience with another company. Focus on what they want, need, and tell you – then give it to them.\u00a0 Leave the competitors behind.<\/p>\n

Surround Yourself with People Who Make You Feel Stupid <\/strong>\u2013 This is another of the fundamental truths that even a sixth grader can identify in an organization. So often CEO\u2019s (startups and all-sized companies) think they have to be the origin of every good idea, or be in control of every decision. The best leaders hire people that are smarter than they are, and relish in getting out of their way. It\u2019s the shortest path to success. A sixth grader can identify leaders that have this quality, and those that don’t. Jeff suggested the concept of \u201cbar raisers;\u201d people that are involved in pushing the limits of new hires, existing contributors, and such to force this concept.<\/p>\n

No Whining <\/strong>\u2013 Jeff closed with the obvious. The first 8 of these points of wisdom are critical, of course.\u00a0 If you have whining, the negative effect means one of the other eight are out of check.\u00a0 However, don\u2019t always shoot the messenger! What you might think is whining, could be one person being bold<\/strong> and bringing something to your attention like a new idea, an innovation, or opportunity to be more bold, frugal or aggressive. Evaluate whining carefully \u2013 it might be the voice in your ear telling you how to minimize regret<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Epilogue<\/h2>\n

The hour long talk ran over \u2013 the energy and interest in sharing from Jeff was overwhelming. The audience was riveted, and wanted more.\u00a0 In my post today, I\u2019ve provided you with my interpretation of the great learning possible from Jeff\u2019s points of wisdom. I\u2019m sure another interpretation exists, but this one shares the main points.<\/p>\n

One thing is for sure. Groupon is using these points of wisdom to extend their lead. Daily Deals are the easy stuff. The really interesting and messy stuff that will bring customer delight is just on the horizon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Friday night, Jeff Holden, Groupon SVP of Product Development Shared the Groupon vision for the world\u2019s Commerce Operating System. The strategy is so much more than daily deals, extending into yield management for merchants, a platform for loyalty and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[63,11,59,104,85,50,4,10,7,101,39,8],"tags":[17,86,12,60,16,15,20,19,34],"class_list":["post-632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-customer-user-experience","category-decision-making","category-definitions","category-economics","category-entrepreneurship","category-innovation","category-leadership","category-marketing","category-organization","category-platforms","category-social-media","category-strategy","tag-agile-behavior","tag-culture-diversity","tag-design-thinking","tag-ethics-values","tag-fearless-marketing","tag-pervasive-strategy","tag-results-outcomes","tag-revenue-pursuit","tag-vision-mission"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Groupon-G-Logo1.png?fit=150%2C150&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p25ukk-ac","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}