The way society sees video games is not necessary to be true always. Toby learnt how to make decisions with half information at a rapid pace. He had to make a lot of decisions every time he played the game. While working on the business you have to make similar decisions. Spread over a time interval.
Most of the business books are written from the perspective of primary markets. Like Silicon Valley and other similar business centres. These ideas might not be relevant to secondary markets. Ottawa in Toby's case.
Toby wanted to build a world-class organization in Ottawa.
Talent in secondary markets tends to stick longer with the organizations.
Invest in the future potential of the employee. Train and empower them to realize their potential.
Most people want to do the right thing. But if you expect them to exercise their willpower to do it, it might not work. Enable environment changes that help them do the right thing. Example – Putting the empty plates in the dustbin. Place the dustbin at the exit door.
Shopify helps individuals sell products. Rather than selling happening at concentrated locations like Wallmart. You give more power to small businesses.
Trust Battery – Example – Love the contribution you do but if you don't attend meetings your trust level with the team diminishes. Do not make it about the individual. Make it about the trust percentage with the team.
You begin a business when you make the first sale.
Toby made the whole company work from home for a month to make them appreciate the people who work remotely.
To adapt to change quickly is a trait needed for nimble businesses.
You can start a business as a side project and still make it big. Creativity does get crumpled under the stress of making it count. Especially when you leave everything and focus on the business.
Unsplas's Mikael had excess photos after a photo shoot and they were wondering what to do with it. They wanted to create a site which they couldn't find after a lot of searching on the web.
Conviction in your story of business is important while trying to convince the VC of your value proposition. This is true especially when there is no straightforward business model to make money.
Identifying VCs who will sync with your value system is important. But really do you have a choice when you need money? Should you be waiting to find the right VC? I guess yes. Especially when you have a good product in your hand.
Unsplash is planning to use Blockchain technology. They want to figure out how a photo that is downloaded on the site is used by the user. Where does it end up going? Who all access it? Through blockchain ledger technology they want to have an audit trail of sorts. They want to connect all the players involved and build a paying ecosystem.
Growth @Unsplash was never the problem. They were growing by leaps and bounds. Getting thousands of photos contributed by the professional photographers. They are trying to figure out a way to monetise. Currently, they have APIs which enable other applications to use the rich database of unsplash.
Stock Image sites like Getty and Shutterstock have pay per use model. Unsplash database is larger than both Getty and Shutterstock put together! As of now the contributors to Unsplash don't get paid.
Some of them do get referrals because of the visibility of their portfolio.