Entrepreneurial Strategies For Dummies: The Examples Of Uber, Facebook, Others
The Business Dictionary described entrepreneurship as the capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make a profit. To effectively organize and manage any business is to maximize strategies and methods. Whether public or private ventures, businesses succeed in the strength of their strategies and central plans. Uber, Facebook, Deliveroo, Ikea, Marks and Spencer, and Zara Clothing are some of the sterling examples of the power of entrepreneurial strategies. And no, we don’t think you are a dummy.
Entrepreneurial Strategies For Dummies: Uber
Founded in 2009 Uber Technologies Inc is a private hire company, operating in more than 633 cities, with over 12 thousand staff. As of 2016, they have a revenue of 6.5 billion dollars. How did Uber become such a force in less than a decade? The answer is popularity over profit. They reckon that if they become so popular and indispensable to the market, they would reap the profit. In fact, such is the aggressive crashing of prices that Uber employed that at a point, they were paying for passengers to ride.
IKEA
Another company that used this price reduction tool for growth is the Swedish-founded furniture company IKEA. Founded in 1943, the company has maintained a growth of 10% every year in the last five years. They successfully reduce price and maintain quality by researching and eliminating unnecessary production costs and building more efficient supply channels and new stores, and giving employees more decision-making powers.
Entrepreneurial Strategies For Dummies: Deliveroo
For Deliveroo, a food delivery company founded in 2013 now in more than a dozen companies and worth millions of dollars, their method was simple. They use promotions to get new customers to try their service. Typically, food that costs 25 dollars would end up going to the customer for five dollars. Deliveroo does this with the belief that the customer now familiar with the process would use the service again.
Facebook is the largest social media outfit with over two billion accounts. Created in 2004 by then nineteen-year-old Mark Zuckerberg the major tool of growth the company utilized was compatibility. Their app is configured in a way that allows it to fit into any type of phone model and the speed of its network. With a slow phone, the application will seek to display in full one picture or story at a time at the expense of trying to unveil the entire timeline at the same time, thereby keeping the user online. This ability to carry everyone along was the magic.
Three things entrepreneurs can learn from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen
Entrepreneurial Strategies: Zara Clothing
Zara Clothing founded by Amancio Ortega is the fastest growing fashion retailer on earth with a revenue of 16 billion dollars is a study in entrepreneurial strategy. While their competitors try to get into the trend, Zara creates the trend. They predict what would become popular in twelve months’ time. When this becomes popular, they would take the lion share of the lion share been the beginners. If their fashion doesn’t sell, it would amount to a disaster. But not for Zara, they keep small stocks and restock their collections frequently.
Mark and Spencer
Mark and Spencer, a legendary British fashion company’s growth strategy is diversification. Overall, they struggle but their decision to go into food, home products, beauty products, branded products, and even financial services have kept them in the market. The idea behind the plan being that the risk of failure of the company is minimized since their services are not in the proverbial one basket.
In conclusion, entrepreneurial strategies are the backbone of any successful companies, while some such as IKEA, Uber, and Deliveroo use lower prices to capture the market, Facebook created an inclusive company, Mark and Spencer remain relevant based on diversification, and Zara stayed ahead by predicting the future.
Image source: Business Insider