Start-ups gone Good

Becoming an entrepreneur is to start a business and then the motto shows up : MAKE SOMETHING PEOPLE WANT”. That must be the aim of an entrepreneur-to make the needed product or at least to create that need. Let’s go back in the past and to review the tamagotchi. It was never needed in the market but still this digital pet was sold over 10 million only in 2005. Another thing is do not worry about the money, not that it’s unimportant but sometimes you can create as a non profit organization, sort of charity type. Most of the companies claim to be benevolent but things may change. For example Google seemed like a charity because they didn’t have any ads for almost a year. But the question is how is to create this nonprofit organization successful?! What makes Google so valuable is that they could make people with money to love Google.

Another issue important to a start-up is to choose the right choice. Business is like a compass and the most difficult thing to do is to pick one of the options near another 2000. But how you decide? I guess it must be done whatever best for the users and never for the competition. Think when you bought a product on behalf to hurt someone’s competition. Answer: NEVER.
Being good is the best strategy because it’s like telling the truth and another advantage of being good is that makes other people to help you. If you’re benevolent, people will be around you: investors, customers, other companies and the most crucial-the potential customers.

There are many advantages of launching quickly, but the most important may be that once you have users, the tamagotchi effect kicks in. Once you have users to take care of, you're forced to figure out what will make them happy, and that's actually very valuable information.

Cultural Differences in M&A's

In the last decade many companies on a global basis are 'going international' in order to become global players. The opening of global markets represented a key driver for international mergers and acquisitions. But with this “openness” M&A faced an unusual problem like “cultural differences”.

It is important for any deal that there be good rationale for integrating the businesses. Nevertheless, even if the rationale of a deal is terrific, it can still fall apart due to the cultural differences. Merging a U.S and a European company is actually appears to be a difficult process. The management styles are totally different and people have obviously different views on how to manage a global organization. Even if we take the English speaking countries together like U.K, USA, still their philosophies are so far apart and impossible to reconcile.
At first glance Culture may seem not an important factor because there were no such firms’ collapses upon the culture issue but still the role of culture in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) suggests that cultural differences can create major obstacles to achieving integration benefits.

Basically we know a lot about the financial issues of M&A’s but what do we know about the cultural issues of M&A’s? M&A’s are inherently culturally disruptive and the conflict is guaranteed when we take two already existing groups and smash them together.
According to a KPMG study, "83% of all mergers and acquisitions (M&As) failed to produce any benefit for the shareholders and over half actually destroyed value". Interviews of over 100 senior executives involved in these 700 deals over a two-year period revealed that the overwhelming cause for failure "is the people and the cultural differences".

Robert Gallagher gives an interesting overview which concerns the culture patterns that are inherent to M&A situation.
1) Employee concerns/paranoia about the uncertainty. The questions like: Will you lose your job ? Your bonus? Be assigned to a new boss who hates you? Etc.
2) The “Winners and loosers”- psychological effect
3) The “Cultural isolation effect”- despite areas of cultural alignment between the two management ranks, still there are certain areas to be disconnected that will create a specific tension and anxiety.

Sources:
http://openrangeanthropologist.com/2008/02/11/mergers-and-acquisitions-when-corporate-cultures-collide/
"Harvard Business Review on Mergers and Acquisitions" -Harvard Business School Press