Hi Reader In 1979, Akio Morita was about to release a portable cassette player with no recording function and headphones-only output. The market research was unanimous: people wanted recording. Buyers wouldn't pay for listening they couldn't share. Sony's own engineering team thought it was a mistake. Morita shipped it anyway. The Walkman sold over 400 million units across its lifespan and created a category that didn't exist before he forced it into the world. A bad idea, according to...
9 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader The sports-tech founder sent me his sales pipeline on a Saturday morning. Eight deals at an advanced stage, all green, all moving…and he was buoyant about it. Fair enough, I thought. The sales team had been busy, the activity metrics were up, the forecast looked like the best one he'd put in front of his board in months. He also sent me three sales-call recordings, "for context," he said. He wanted me to hear how well the sales team was handling the buyers (football academies). So I...
16 days ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader I was sitting in the corner of one of those flash, modern glass meeting rooms in a sports tech startup about two and a half years back, watching a deal I had no business being nervous about. It was before I did any of this properly, if you get my meaning. It was just a favour for a friend. He'd founded the company, closed the first seven deals himself with his charisma and product knowledge and a willingness to discount more than he probably should have, and now there was a new...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Hi Reader You know when someone says something to you but their body language screams that they’re bracing for a reaction? I went quiet. Just looked at him for a second. He held it. Didn't flinch, didn't qualify it. "Yeah," he said. "You heard me." We were about forty minutes into a conversation about why the sales report & pipeline looked the way it looked. They had a really good product with a decent team. And a founder who hadn't slept properly in four months. Somewhere in the middle of...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Hi Reader Last Friday at 1.15pm, a few days after Edition 100 of this newsletter was delivered, a founder I am beginning to work with sent me a voice note. Not an email. A voice note…that kinda tells you something about where he was, doesn't it? Anyways, he'd spent the morning sitting with a call recording from his best rep. Just listening. He'd blocked the time in his diary like it was a client meeting, which in his world meant other things didn't move it. "I felt like a bit of a fraud," he...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader Welcome to Edition #100 of Fine Lines! Many thanks for sticking with me and welcome to my newest subscribers. I asked a sports tech start-up founder about 9 months ago how much time she spent preparing her team to perform versus actually performing alongside them. She thought about it. For more time than I expected…and told me something in itself. Then she said: "We don't really have time for that kind of thing right now." Not confidently. Almost apologetically. Kinda like it was a...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader In 1847, a Viennese physician named Ignaz Semmelweis discovered why women were dying in his maternity ward at a rate that should have been impossible to ignore. The answer? Handwashing. Specifically, the absence of it. Doctors were moving directly from performing autopsies to delivering babies and the data Semmelweis gathered was unambiguous; wards where handwashing was introduced saw mortality rates drop from ten percent to near zero. He had the answer & the evidence. He presented...
2 months ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader On the morning of January 28th 1986, engineers at Morton Thiokol had already said what needed to be said. The O-rings on the Space Shuttle Challenger would fail in cold temperatures. They had the data and had made the case. The night before the launch they had recommended, formally, that it be delayed. By morning that recommendation was gone. The data hadn't changed but pressure from above had and it didn't leave room for the answer the engineers were sitting on. So the people who...
2 months ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader There is a type of commercial leader who is, genuinely, impressive with data. Fast, precise, prepared. Pull the numbers up on a Monday morning and they've already read them. Ask them what's happening in the pipeline and they'll tell you - accurately, specifically, with a clear view on what needs to happen next. They are also, in many cases, almost completely unaware of what is happening in the room. Not occasionally. Not under unusual pressure. Routinely. As if it’s a default...
3 months ago • 3 min read