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Better a clown than a clone

--- Courtesy businessworldindia.com ---

I didn't believe it. I had just downloaded Google's official SEC filing for going public. Typically a company would say it needed to raise some round sum of money. But in Google's filing, the number was $2,718, 281,828.

Exactly two billion seven hundred and eighteen million and some dollars. I giggled, for as any student who's tried to forget maths knows, this number (2.718281828) is the constant 'e'. And instead of raising $2.5 billion or $3 billion, Google wanted to raise exactly $e billion.

Apart from winning the hearts of maths buffs, this gem brought forward an important point - why is it that people pretend they need exactly some round figure sum of money? If it's a guess anyway, why don't you say so?

Google has never shied away from being itself. From the dress code - t-shirts and jeans - to the website that has been adamantly simple. While the world has rushed to fill their sites with Flash animations and features, these people have the confidence to speak their minds.

The Google S-1 form - which can be downloaded from www.sec.gov - is a treasure. For a company that did almost a billion dollars in revenues with over $600 million in profits (imagine that!), it's a refreshingly informal talk about their dreams and everything that could go wrong with them. After identifying Microsoft and Yahoo as potential competitors, they confess: "Both Microsoft and Yahoo have more employees than we do (in Microsoft's case, currently more than 20 times as many)." The prospectus goes on to shatter every notion about how billion dollar companies are supposed to behave. The vast majority of listed firms 'manage' their forecasts and results to fit what analysts expect - and both sides know it's a game of fairy tales.

Google won't play ball. We can't predict the future, they say, and hence we can't give forecasts. So please don't ask us. They paraphrase their hero, Warren Buffet, and say: "We won't 'smooth' quarterly or annual results: If earnings figures are lumpy when they reach headquarters, they will be lumpy when they reach you."

The prospectus is a must-read; not many corporates have the gall to say their mission is 'Don't be evil'. This to me is a company that has achieved outstanding success, then looks around, sees suited-booted people from Wall Street telling it what to do, concludes those costumes are from a way of doing things that is obsolete, and rejects them.

Wall Street is sweating. Google has forsaken the traditional way of raising money - of going to investment bankers who would underprice the shares and sell it to favoured customers who would make a huge amount of money when trading opened. Google chose the Net and the Dutch auction process that gives the smallest investor the same right as the biggest ones. When one firm, Goldman Sachs, tried to schmooze its way to get the Google IPO mandate, it was summarily fired. This is a company that clearly says I'm not part of your system. And a company with the size and track record to actually change that system.

Thousands of entrepreneurs should watch this IPO closely. If it takes off - I truly hope it will - it can drive a stake through the heart of the 'old, big bank' way of doing things. It could not just make capital markets freer, more transparent, but also shine a light for other company founders to stand up, say what they believe in, and reject the path of PR gobbledygook.

I see entrepreneurs coming to me, in suits and ties they're not comfortable in, showing slides full of nonsense jargon. I asked one why he was dressed so. "Sir, all magazines show businessmen dressed this way." Here's hoping that the pretence and sham of 'formality' won't stop you in what you want to do.

If you're starting a business, you need to win the trust of people around you. If you dress and speak like someone you're not, they can see through you. If you prefer being in kurtas and speaking in Bhojpuri, do so. If you're a clown at heart, it's far better to be one, than become another statistic in this world full of clones.
 

kartik

Kartik Raichura
Staff member
IIM Ahmedabad ranked among world's top 100 B-schools

Ahmedabad's Indian Institute of Management and four other business schools from Asia have figured amongst the world's top 100 management schools in a survey published by the prestigious London-based weekly Economist's "Intelligence Unit". IIM Ahmedabad has been ranked 64th in the list. Only four other Asian schools figure in it.
School of Business of Hong Kong University (ranked 68th), Graduate School of International Management of International University of Japan (84th), Nanyang Business School of Nanyang Technological University of Singapore (93th) and China Europe International Business School (95th) are the other Asian institutions.
Kellogg School of Management of Northwestern University has topped the EIU's ranking for full time MBA programme for the third year in succession. It was a matter of pride for India as in one of the categories, "open new career opportunities," IIM Ahmedabad was ranked first, followed by Tuck School of Business of Dartmouth College and Kellogg.
The survey used four parameters to arrive at the rankings in which views of students and alumni represented 26 per cent of the score allocated to each school while the remainder was based on data provided in the school questionnaire
 
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