“Experiments never fail.”
When I look into it, I can consider myself as someone blessed with a satisfying career.
As an Executive Advisor who whisper management innovations and organizational strategy in the ears of CEOs and business leaders, helping them accelerate the performance of their companies is as good as it gets.
But it seems that He isn’t done with me yet. He has another plan in store and brought me to a new season in my life: I became an investor.
It started at the heart of the pandemic. Having four friends as partners, we launched our venture capital firm. Aptly named BTL (Build to Last) Venture Capital, we are on the lookout for tech startups who need seed capital to scale their business.
Recently, I’ve invested financial and human capital in co-founding Innoventure Holdings, the first and only digital conglomerate in the country.
With 20+ startups in five spaces – e-commerce, e-health, e-learning, e-kitchen, and my partner’s apparent favorite (which is rapidly becoming mine as well), e-sports – Jason and the founders are on a mission of creating impact through innovative ventures.
Add to that, as an Angel Investor, I also serve as Executive Advisor to a handful of businesses and work with each CEO in creating flawless operations and scaling up excellence.
In this new endeavor, I’ve heard pitches from different entrepreneurs and companies – tech startups, logistics and dropshipping, and notably, one founder asking for several millions to launch his exciting dream park somewhere in Pampanga.
But I guess what stands out is the one I heard from a close friend. Planning an idea, he told me he’ll subtly go into combat with a well known foodcart franchise, undercutting them with lower price as his competitive advantage.
Six years later, not only did he not become a worthy competitor to the said company, as far as I know, he hasn’t even launched his business yet.
That’s one problem with big dreams: it sometimes becomes too overwhelming to start, we end up not doing it at all.
Which is why I am a proponent of small experiments long before it was fashionable.
Little Bets, as I like to call them, are a series of small scale, multiple experiments in rapid succession of iterations.
In a world where bigger means better and considered the ultimate measure of success, it seems counterintuitive to go small and inconspicuous. But I do this for three simple reasons:
Small is easy: it requires less resources – effort, materials and capital.
Small is fast: less resources, faster to do, launch, and re-launch.
Small is cheap: less resources, faster to make. Plus: not too costly in the event of failure.
This is where Shapets comes in. On a mission of making excellent pet care accessible and attainable to pet owners and pet lovers in the Philippines, it is our tech startup in the pet space.
Not unlike the mantra about racing – it’s not the car but the driver behind the wheel – as an investor, I follow the same principle: I focus less on the idea and more on the people, specifically, the team behind it.
Founded by Amanda and Mikez, the dream is to create a digital platform, a one-stop shop for Pet Parents. Yet as big as the dream is, they started small by first creating a community through social media pages and providing one product (easy to make, less resources needed, fast and cheap) to its members.
As the community grows, it becomes easier to validate concept by introducing just one thing. One offerring makes it easy to focus, get feedback by seeing how the market responds, and fine tuning accordingly.
Closing Thoughts
Little Bets make it easy to achieve quick wins. As my partner Jason like to say: we win the war by winning lots of battles as quick as possible.
So write a book and start with a page. Have one million pesos in the bank by saving that Php 1000. And yes, build that startup dream of yours by starting that Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram account.
Think big. Start small. Move fast.
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Florentino Hernando is the Managing Director of FAHernando Consulting, an Executive Advisory firm with the mission to accelerate performance by 100x.
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