Over the years we have seen the emergence of some groundbreaking technology companies such as Amazon, Google and Tesla. What these companies tend to have in common is that initially they were dismissed by investors and made to work extremely hard to get where they are today. One other trait which is extremely important is that each and every one of these companies, and there are many more, has extremely strong management.
Fighting the good fight
Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, found it extremely hard going in the early days as analyst dismissed a long-term future for his company. Concerns that profits were years away, margins were wafer thin and consumers were not too keen in buying products online all proved to be well wide of the mark.
If we also take a look at Tesla, and it’s hard talking CEO Elon Musk, this is a company which has taken the electric car market to a new level, actually sold cars and improved current technology. The electric car industry still has some way to go before it is mass-market but there is no doubt that Elon Musk has been an integral part of the company.
The same is true to Google to a lesser extent as the company emerged when the Internet was perhaps in its infancy and it was a little “easier” to make headway although the company did blow Microsoft and Yahoo search engines out of the water. Google is often the subject of regulatory reviews in relation to the company’s influence on the search engine industry as a whole. However, do these regulators forget the billions upon billions of dollars the company spent and is it really Google’s fault that its competitors are falling by the wayside?
Remaining focused
All of the above companies, and they are just a small selection of similar stories, have needed management who continually focused on the longer term while attempting to tackle short-term issues. As each short-term hurdle was overcome so the investment arena became a little more accommodating and interested in investing. We all know that the investment arena is a fickle market because one day you can be the best stock in the world and then tomorrow you can crash and burn. It is therefore a testament to the determination of the likes of Elon Musk that Tesla, after a number of PR mishaps, is still pushing ahead with investment, new technology and new cars. Surely it would have been easier for Elon Musk, a multibillionaire, to sit back and think “do I need all of this”.
Failing because of weak management
We can only estimate the number of companies which have created groundbreaking technology but because of weak management they have not been able to make the most of their products/services. Only a fraction of new technology companies actually make it to the mass market. In many ways, and Google, Tesla and Amazon are testament to this, there is a need to educate the wider public and the investment markets to long-term potential. Investors are always looking for a short-term gain when in reality long-term investment has been shown to create greater wealth.