Think Big, Think Global, Scale Up

Thinking big led me to success in business and life.  It helped me see opportunity where others saw obstacles. As a leader, it helped me articulate ambitious goals that inspired teams. As a mentor and coach, it helped me guide people to achieve things they doubted were possible.

Think global

Now as an investor and entrepreneur I’m even more convinced of the importance of thinking big. 

Entrepreneurship is hard. For many entrepreneurs, getting an innovative product to market is a big enough goal.  

But for me, given the kind of work and capital that goes into a startup, I prefer to think big, globally in fact; and aim to build a great, valuable company right from the beginning.

Scale up

That’s why I was nodding in agreement while reading Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies, by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Chris Yeh, et al.

In it, the authors argue that when a startup matures to the point where it has a killer product, a clear, sizeable market, and a robust distribution channel, it has the opportunity to scale up. 

And it must, as LinkedIn, AirBnb and Facebook did, just to mention a few of the hugely successful stories we’ve seen in the past 10 years.

But first

Let me stop here in case you think I’m putting the cart before the horse. 

I’m not at all suggesting that startups should scale up prematurely.  Look at the authors’ key words: “killer product,” “clear, sizeable market,” and “robust distribution channel.”

What I’m suggesting is that entrepreneurs think big and think globally from day one.

The idea is that as they go about creating their startup, they make every decision with the goal in mind of scaling big as soon as it is practical after the market shows an appetite for their product.

The Ubicquia example

Let me just use Ubicquia, the startup where I serve as vice chairman and investor, as an example.  

We are fresh back from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where we received an incredibly positive reaction to Ubicquia’s family of products, which are designed to solve a big problem for municipalities, utilities, and wireless carriers around the world.

The Ubicquia platform includes a lighting control router that, sitting on top of streetlights, helps municipalities manage street lighting more efficiently. The unit is powered via a NEMA socket, making it affordable and incredibly easy to install.  

But that’s just for lighting.  

The platform also includes a small cell, powered by the same NEMA socket, that wireless carriers can use to expand their 4G and 5G networks in an economical, efficient, and effective manner to meet the fast-growing demand for data and video.

Ubicquia has a set of killer products, a sizable worldwide market, and it is building a robust, global distribution channel. On top of that, Ubicquia’s Chairman Lowell Kraff and CEO Ian Aaron have assembled a talented team of employees, partners, and investors to take the company to the next level. 

Keys to success

As I look back on my journey I'm convinced that thinking big and never letting anyone put limitations on what I wanted to achieve were the keys to my success.

I firmly believe these two principles apply to anyone aiming to succeed in any endeavor, be it in business or in life.

But they particularly apply to entrepreneurs.  

Entrepreneurs are the discoverers of the 21st Century.

By thinking big, their predecessors in history discovered the Americas, circled the Earth and walked on the Moon.

I can’t wait to see where today’s big-thinking discoverers will take us next.

Ralph