Two of the entrepreneurs might not be well known to most in South Africa, and the third might be best known only thanks to a recent TV series about his impressive rise and spectacular fall.
Their stories mirror the mix of character, vision, timing and a good bit of luck to make something a success. There are thousands who are doing the same each day but because the timing or luck is not aligned will not make headlines. It is fair to say that few successful people get to that position without taking big risks and making decisions that they might prefer not to make.
Hopefully it offers some reflection on your own actions. Being this successful is not only not possible for everyone, it would be a bad thing to aspire to. Business Unusual might focus on the change and disruption for the potential it offers for progress, but change for change's sake is chaos and no-one hoping for progress would want that.
Robin Zeng started his career working on phone batteries for Japan’s TDK. In 1999 at the age of 31 he founded his own company to produce batteries themselves. Six years later, it was bought by TDK with Zeng remaining as its head. In 2012 he left to create a new company known as CATL or Contemporary Amperex Technology which is the kind of brand name to win any pub quiz.
Despite the rocketing rise of mobile phones, his vision for what electric vehicles offered as a growth opportunity is what justified his move just four years after the first Tesla went on sale. China too had been looking to rapidly expand on its industrial capacity and while not realising it at first had taken the first steps to become for electric vehicles what Saudi Arabia had become for internal combustion vehicles.
His company with the support of the Chinese government expanded their operations adding multiple factory sites some half a kilometre long to process huge volumes of lithium ion batteries to become one of the largest suppliers of batteries to vehicle manufacturers including Tesla.
Supply is as important as demand and so the company has made significant investment in the companies that mine lithium, cobalt and nickel, key ingredients in the current mix to make the most effective batteries.
Its success has propelled Zeng to be worth over $40 billion. The 29th richest person at the start of the year and #3 in China.
You may think at 54 he has reached the pinnacle of success which is hard to argue, but despite his knowledge of battery technology, he could not know what Covid and the war in Ukraine would do. As China has remained determined to lockdown any areas where Covid is found, it has significantly affected production. The recent heatwave and drought across China has taken its toll too with industry being compelled to stop production to save the power network from failing. There was also a significant cost to cover a short position it had taken on nickel prices in the hope that they would fall with new production coming on stream, but the invasion of Ukraine has caused commodities to spike. Zeng’s fortune has dropped by over $10 billion in the last few months.
The war in Ukraine and global warming will cast a long shadow over the ambitions of Robin Zeng, he may feel justified in challenging the Communist Party’s approach to Covid containment. He will likely be reminded that despite the strong support and assistance from the government, his success might not spare him from the treatment faced by Jack Ma when he challenged the central governments running of the economy.
Vietnam being a communist country, Pham Nhat Vuong took the opportunity to study in the Soviet Union with a scholarship thanks to his mathematical abilities in the early 90s. Opting to remain in Ukraine after graduating he started an instant noodle business that grew into a specialised producer of dehydrated foods. Nestle bought the operation in 2009 with Vuong returning to Vietnam with a large sum to invest in his next venture. He started with property development and grew to expand into hospitality, medical and most recently vehicles under the VinGroup, one of the largest businesses in the country, making its founder a billionaire. His latest venture VinFast, is an automaker that had its first model roll off the production line in just two years. The company is only five years old but has grown to produce cars and bikes in Vietnam and this year has broken ground to build electric vehicles in the US to challenge the other electric vehicle makers. The VinGroup and Vietnam has a limited history with car production and so to take on the home of the motor manufacturing and with an electric vehicle no less is either the kind of bold move that with a bit of luck and the right timing could put Vietnam on the motoring map. However there are signs that supplies of key materials like batteries and the global economy not looking as robust as VinGroup might need to see its ambitions come to a screeching halt.
Given the outsized role it plays in the Vietnamese economy and the risk that its vehicle business failing would have on the rest of the group, it is odd that such a successful entrepreneur would look to risk it, but it appears this behaviour is the norm not the exception which can be seen in the next entrepreneur.
In less than a decade, Adam Neumann went from being unknown to being a global business celebrity to a toxic element of the company he grew to a potential $50 billion value. He did not invent something new, nor did he revolutionise something we had been doing for years. He rented out office space.
After founding a shared office space project, he and co-founder Miguel McKelvey looked to do it again but on a bigger scale and infuse the office with millennial take on what a work environment should be. Based on the more homely and fun setting that big tech companies had created for their staff, they looked to provide the same for small businesses and freelancers.
Their idea to improve the office was spot on, their methods to deliver that certainly not. The company was never profitable despite increasing in size and value over nine years. It had taken billions in investments and spent billions more on leases that were too high and for too long while selling access for too little. Even before the pandemic hit the company was doomed thanks to the very unconventional behaviour of Neuman and his wife in running the company. Desperately in need of new investment, banks had lined up to run its IPO, that was before it was discovered how the company was being run. Neumann was kicked out the company with a golden parachute before the business could finally list at a fraction of the original valuation.
At 46 and still a very wealthy man, you might think Newmann would take it easy and spend time with his wife and six children. You would be wrong. After looking to offer carbon credits on the blockchain with his FlowCarbon startup, he emerged in the last few months with a $350 million investment from Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist that helped fund the likes of Facebook and Twitter. This is his company’s largest initial investment in a company that does not exist yet (in August 2022). It will manage the thousands of rental properties that Neumann had acquired while still at WeWork.
For those that followed the companies fall or more recently the Apple TV series WeCrashed you will be forgiven for thinking this is another crash in the making.
But when you consider that there is a significant number of Americans and the entire Republican party that believe a similar charismatic and confident “businessman” should become president again, then this is not such a stretch anymore.
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