Don’t Forget To Evolve With The Evolution

Every day new ideas are thought out, innovations as some may call them. Personally i prefer calling new ideas evolutions. Let me explain why; before the smartphone we had the mobile phone, before the mobile phone we had the phone, before the phone we had the telegraph and before telegraph we had the letter and so on and so on. For me this is evolution, for some Innovation, more on this great topic another day :)

Remember/Imagine a world without smartphones

Yes i know, this is a crazy thought, but please do. Before the smartphone and apps, we had companies like Nokia, Ericsson… and they ruled the mobile phone industry, individual taxi companies ruled their cities, and games like Snake was the coolest game you could play on your phone. To be honest I was never that good at snake, it was too boring and repetitive (as seen in the picture below).

Year 2007 Nokia dominated 62,5 percent of the mobile market with their OS (Symbian) and was a comfortable leader in the mobile industry. All this before Apple decided to enter the mobile phone industry with their iPhone (the real smartphone) and it’s amazing iOS apps platform in year 2007. I’m mentioning Apple apps because without the iOS apps platform iPhone would have been a new Nokia phone with a big screen, fancier but after some time just as dull.

The Apple iOS enabling development of apps by third party made iPhone what it is today, according to me this is why Apple took Nokias mobile market share and many other companies not fast enough to react and evolve with the evolution.

Thanks to the Apple apps platform we have today companies like Uber, that has changed the taxi industry for ever, WhatsApp, Instagram and millions of other apps created and being created as we speak. Let’ not forget the games that have come with the smartphone like angry birds, candy crush, the list never ends :)

Early year 2014 Microsoft buys Nokia mobile division and by the end of year 2014 Microsoft drops Nokia as a brand from their mobile, Nokia as a mobile phone is no more. This shows that even if you’re number one at what you do, not evolving fast enough can kill you no matter how big your company is.

With this dark (big company losing its market) but great introduction I would like to talk about, staying current as a business, embrace new technologies and what recent advances have been most influential for businesses.

Stay current as a business or dieeeee!

I would like to start of by apologizing for the rough title but it’s the harsh truth and nothing but the truth :) Businesses not understanding their market and where it’s heading will lose every single time, if they aren’t fast enough to evolve before/with the markets needs or acquire companies that are innovating their industry forward. Blockbuster VS Netflix is a perfect example of companies offering the same product but one of them was current (Netflix) and the other got obsolete (Blockbuster) over time. By the time Blockbuster realised what was happening they were dead, they even had a chance to buy Netflix early on but declined, see the story in the video below:

 
The Internet as we know it has killed it’s share of companies but also given birth to companies that would never see the light of day if the Internet didn’t exist. Without the Internet we would not have Google, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Dropbox, Kabbage, Salesforce, SurveyLegend… the list is neverending. Here is a list of 10 companies that the internet killed, evolve and at the same time created :)

 
What we can learn is that companies that say no to evolution, companies that are so focused on what they do that they forget about the world around them and it’s evolution will eventually have to close down and let the young newly started companies take the market from them. With today’s web this is a fast process, old companies cease to exist while new companies with ten times smaller teams, only with thousands of dollars in self funding take over the market.

To stay current in the technological landscape you really have to understand your customer, and their needs, this can be done using online surveys, by conducting one on one interviews of your customers and potential customers. Don’t forget to subscribing to some of the biggest tech newspapers like techcrunch, they provide you with the latest and greatest, stay tuned and never opt-out out from the information loop.

Knowledge is power, and use your power wisely to make your next decision, because you never know what decision will make or break your business.

Embrace New Technologies Like The Air you’re Breathing

Here at Surveylegend we are frequent user of new technology, we use Trello for our organising of development, Git for storage of our precious development, Dropbox for file sharing and safe keeping, Vimeo and Youtube for hosting of our videos and Google docs for content collaborations and SurveyLegend (our own survey platform) for feedback collecting. The list ladies and gentlemen goes on and on and on :)

Without these technologies our job would take more time, cost a lot more and in the end we would not be able to exist. Today’s technology makes building companies faster and better, in a way never possible before. Not utilizing the technology available to your business just makes life harder, so why not use them.

Changes That Have Influenced Businesses For The Better

Business has never been this easy to start and as an entrepreneur myself i urge everyone with a idea to believe in themselves. The day you start your first business you have your first fan, that’s me, if you ever should need some advice email me at Jasko(at)SurveyLegend.com.

I ♡ cloud

But what has changed that has made starting your own IT company so much easier, let me explain. In the bad old days :) you had to almost be funded from day one if you wanted to run your own IT business, do to the costs. You actually had to buy your own servers to even launch a web page (still some hardcore developers love the servers, as seen in the picture, from the epic series silicon valley).

Today the story is different, you open up an cloud based server account with DigitalOcean, Amazon, Firebase and other alike, in minutes you have more capacity for $50 then you had in the old days for $5000 dollars (when you had to buy your own servers and hire someone to make them work). Oh ja and you save months of work, yes i know, it’s crazy but that’s the effect of technical innovations (evolution).

Open Source is the savior of time

In the bad old days :) you had to build everything from the beginning, now you can build a solution in months instead of years, not needing venture capital or any funding except your time, if you know some coding that is. Plenty of fish is a perfect example of a company founded and owned by the same person, Markus Frind. Markus sold his company year 2015 for an amazing $575 million in cash, and here is the story of how he did it.

With a lot of the code today being open source today you can also be a one man company making millions like Mark Find, see this great interview with Mark Frind.

Cash Is King

Kickstarter and Indiegogo have changed the world for the better, companies developing hardware, and many more have found a way to test their market before the product is even produced. Thanks to Kickstarter and Indiegogo hardware startups can get paid and market their brand before even having a product ready to ship. The simplicety and power of the people has really changed the way new products are developed and introduced to the market by startups, saving them bundles of time and money.

The way businesses take loans have also changed thanks to the evolution of the financial industry. Businesses can take loans faster allowing them to make strategic investments without losing control of their company do to investors. Companies like Kabbage, allows businesses to link their latest data through their fully automated online platform – allowing Kabbage to review the overall health of their business (in contrast to just a credit score as with traditional lenders). This allows Kabbage to approve and provide business financing in minutes instead of months. Businesses can no take their company to the next level without having to chase investments, thanks to companies like Kabbage you as a company keep more of the business you worked so hard to establish.

Companies can now move much faster and do more in less time thanks to the technology advances that’s changing old ways of thinking. And I’m happy to see that even the financial industry is changing, something that was seen impossible not that long ago.

It’s because of dreamers like Nikola Tesla, the Wright Brothers, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and many more… brave enough to chase their dreams in real life that we are where we are today, without dreamers brave enough to chase their dreams we would still be in a cave with no fire :)

It’s never been this easy to start your own company, yes it takes time, yes it’s hard work but if you don’t do it who will? So do us all a favor and make your dreams come true, they may help our world and the world sure needs it :)

Stay Legendary,
Jasko