On the growth curve – from Timely to Trade Me

Ryan Baker and Andrew Schofield have done it before, building BookIt and then selling it to Trade Me in 2010. It’s 2013, and the pair were still spending time at Trade Me up until a few months ago, but were also working on a new company – Timely.

Timely is an online service for companies who run appointment based businesses. Their website is a homage to doing everything right for cloud based businesses selling to small business.

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Emerging from the non-visible community

Today we saw an announcement that Optimizer HQ has raised $4 million from local and offshore investors. They are apparently considering an IPO, but needed cash to tide them over for the next few months.

For me Optimizer HQ, who have 60 staff here and offshore, comes out of nowhere, from the non-aligned community or non visible community in the diagram below.

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Philip A Fisher

The success of an investment does not depend on what is generally known about a company at the time the investment is made. Rather it depends on what gets cheap jerseys to be known about it … Therefore wholesale Cleveland Browns jerseys it is not the profit margins of the past but those of the future that are important to the investor.

That’s a quote from  Philip Fisher, an investor with a long term perspective and a fondness for buying stocks in high technology companies. That was a very uncommon approach to take, given that he was active from 1928. He wholesale jerseys wrote Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits in 1958, a book which is still well worth reading today.

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The long run value from end users

At LWCM we see that value comes from satisfying end user needs, but that’s only part of the story. This diagram from a presentation I gave at Innovation Tech Week yesterday explains a bit more:

Beyond 2020

In order for investors to get their lasting returns, we need to also identify and sell to the paying customers, and to build a company that creates, sells and supports the products and services. Investors also need to think about lasting returns, and not about quick gains. Investors searching for quick gains are really indulging in trading, and while that may be perfectly valid as a financial strategy for some, businesses themselves should focus on creating lasting value.

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