Billionaires are good at getting more with less.

Solve problems without more money, more people, or more technology is what Jack Ma would advise.

How can I 10x value without adding team members?

How can I 10x profits without adding assets?

How can I 10x capital without adding owners?

By definition, especially when they are self-made, a billionaire has captured more value from the same resources than someone else who had access to the same resources.

Here’s another billionaire example for you: Mark Leonard, founder and CEO of Constellation Software.

Plenty of investors have funds in excess of $50 million, but very few can turn $50 million into $78 billion in 25 years. Mark Leonard did just that.

His portfolio of boring, small, and industry-specific software companies grew 37% annually, three times more than the S&P 500.

If you owned $100 worth of shares in Constellation’s 2006 IPO, they would be worth $22,605 today.

Mark Leonard started his career like us all. He wanted big, fast returns by any means necessary. So, he entered the venture capital industry looking for riches.

What attracted Mark to VC, besides the promise of 1000x jackpots, was the stories of VC-founder-support: founders like Steve Jobs (Apple), Bob Noyce (Intel), and Nolan Bushnell (Atari), supported by legends like Arthur Rock and Don Valentine. 

However, because VCs need to exit within ten years, Mark noticed VCs rush the founders they support.

Leonard also saw other harmful effects of rapid scale. 

He observed that teams become less creative as they expand because scale and complexity force the addition of managers to control the chaos. 

The key insight Mark captured as he blitz-scaled startups was more managers increase the distance between the builder and the customer; therefore introducing the incentive to please the manager, not the customer. If not mitigated, this incentive will slow the company’s organic growth.

Finally, Mark saw in his portfolio that the best companies were founded by specialists in their industries. 

When experts work closely with customers to solve their current problems and are curious to learn and anticipate emerging problems, they build better products.

So Mark decided to focus on those three things:

• Instead of 10-year support cycles, he committed to lifelong support.

• Instead of scaling teams to the point of perverse incentives, he focused on keeping teams focused on customers.

• Instead of serving broader and wider audiences, he made sure to serve one type of customer per company.

Those three principles were the basis of his investment thesis for Constellation Software, the forever-holding company he founded that acquired small, industry-specific software companies that grew more than 1000x in 25 years. 

So here’s what you can do to think more like billionaire Mark Leonard:

• Commit to a lifelong journey with your entrepreneurship. Don’t rush. Figure out ways to grow organically.

• Keep your organization small and empower your teams to serve customers better.

• If you have an idea that serves a different customer, acquire or start a new company.

The one mindset that ties Mark’s thesis and these takeaways together is a focus on growing with what you already have without the need to rush. 

Grow organically. 

How can you invest in more skills so you can have a bigger impact individually?

How can you use the team you already have to serve your customers better?

How do you create better solutions (not more solutions)?

How can you get more from what you have access to now?

Strategy Question:

What can you build once that adds tons of value to your customers with minimal costs to you?

Identify your biggest value-adds. Now, brainstorm how you can enhance it to deliver more value by making it less costly for you.

You could create a guide that educates your customers up front so they can use your product or service more efficiently. 

Maybe you can upload your knowledge base to a chatbot, freeing up customer service to deal with higher-order problems.

Think long and hard, and feel free to reply with your ideas. I’ll send back some feedback.

Takeaways

• Commit to a lifelong journey with your entrepreneurship. Don’t rush. Figure out ways to grow organically

• Keep your organization small. Empower your teams to serve customers better

• If you have an idea that serves a different customer, start a new company