May 28, 2020

Business Advice | Milan Rao, Jim McKelvey, and Liz Miller on DisrupTV with Ray Wang & Vala Afshar

Responding to the COVID pandemic is a 3-step process:
- 1) Protect your employees and customers
- 2) Seek ways to resume business in a safe manner
- 3) Find ways to emerge stronger
“Everything is going to go virtual” – Milan Rao
- “The digital transformation glass ceiling has been broken by the pandemic”
Copying is the ultimate solution for solving an existing problem, but it can’t be used to solve a new problem
Square gave away the smaller version of their credit card swiper which didn’t work as well but got people’s attention because of how small it was
- “I had this thing that was somehow a conversation starter and I was damned if I’m gonna sacrifice it just for 20-percent better read fidelity” – Jim McKelvey
Being an expert won’t help in doing something that has not ever been done before
- “You can’t be an expert in new” – Jim McKelvey
This pandemic is a test for companies to see if they’ll maintain their brand and keep their core values
- “What happens to your brand when the customer finds out that you left the back door open?” – Liz Miller

Milan Rao (@MilanRao_) is the President of Wipro
Jim McKelvey (@2000F) is the co-founder of Square and author of The Innovation Stack
Liz Miller (@lizkmiller) is the Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research
Hosts: R “Ray” Wang (@rwang0) and Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar)

Milan Rao is the President of Wipro, the company employees over 185,000 people
- The first priority for Wipro during the pandemic was the safety of their employees and customers
  - To help employees work safely from home, the company shipped over 40,000 computers and 30,000 wi-fi dongles
    - They even converted one of their campuses into a temporary COVID hospital
Responding to the COVID pandemic is a 3-step process:
- 1) Protect your employees and customers
- 2) Seek ways to resume business in a safe manner
- 3) Find ways to emerge stronger
If you’re a business, you need to ask yourself, how can I make my customers feel safe?
- If you’re a restaurant, offer food delivery drop-offs
- If you’re a retail store, offer curbside pick-up
  - Reimagine the user journey and how that journey can be digitally enabled whether it’s through AI, robotics, 5G, etc.
    - What are the megatrends that will happen going forward?
“Everything is going to go virtual” – Milan Rao
- “The digital transformation glass ceiling has been broken by the pandemic”
  - All the naysayers and skeptics of digital technology are gone
If you have a positive attitude and stay resilient, you will emerge stronger from this crisis

Jim McKelvey is the co-founder of Square and author of The Innovation Stack
Amazon attacked Square when the company was only 4 years old
- “Amazon copied our product, undercut our price, and was just gonna kill us and when Amazon does this to a startup, the startup always dies. Except in one case and that was Square.” – Jim McKelvey
  - Copying is the ultimate solution for solving an existing problem, but it can’t be used to solve a new problem
    - Amazon spent their time copying Square but Square spent their time creating new solutions
      - Square basically created a new market
Entrepreneurship isn’t cool until it works
- Being an entrepreneur is brutal and has a high chance of failing
Square gave away the smaller version of their credit card swiper which didn’t work as well but got people’s attention because of how small it was
- “I had this thing that was somehow a conversation starter and I was damned if I’m gonna sacrifice it just for 20-percent better read fidelity” – Jim McKelvey
Being an expert won’t help in doing something that has not ever been done before
- “You can’t be an expert in new” – Jim McKelvey
  - Don’t disqualify yourself from doing something new, no one has the credentials for something that has never been done before
    - When you’re doing something new, there will be a ton of negative reinforcement. Don’t pay too much attention to it.

Liz Miller is the Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research
This pandemic is a test for companies to see if they’ll maintain their brand and keep their core values
- “What happens to your brand when the customer finds out that you left the back door open?” – Liz Miller
  - That could break a customer’s trust forever
    - It’s not just about the loss in revenue, but the permanent loss of trust and security
      - You can recover profits, but it’s much harder to recover customer trust
CMOs are translators: They translate the voice of their customers into what their company should become
“What people buy is the promise you deliver through your branded messaging” – Liz Miller