Episode Details

7 Tips To Become More Creative And See Opportunities

Have you ever been in a country and had trouble finding a taxi? This happened to me many times in America, where I was stuck for hours miles from my hotel., And in the Philippines where it was not only hard to find a cab but when you found one they always tried to rip you off.

I had a story recently that the founders of Uber was in a similar situation while attending a conference in Paris a few years ago but decided to do something about it. They of course went on to found a company which now provides millions of people with a good transparent service, which we can use from our phone and pay for without cash.

According to Investopedia.com, Uber’s story began in Paris in 2008. Two friends, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, were attending the LeWeb, an annual tech conference the Economist describes as “where revolutionaries gather to plot the future". 

In 2007, both men had sold start-ups they co-founded for large sums. Kalanick sold Red Swoosh to Akamai Technologies for $19 million while Camp sold StumbleUpon to eBay for $75 million. 

Rumor has it that the concept for Uber was born one winter night during the conference when the pair was unable to get a cab. Initially, the idea was for a timeshare limo service that could be ordered via an app. After the conference, the entrepreneurs went their separate ways, but when Camp returned to San Francisco, he continued to be fixated on the idea and bought the domain name UberCab.com. 

In 2009, Camp was still CEO of StumbleUpon, but he began working on a prototype for UberCab as a side project. By summer of that year, Camp had persuaded Kalanick to join as UberCab’s ‘Chief Incubator’. The service was tested in New York in early 2010 using only three cars, and the official launch took place in San Francisco in May. 

The rest, as they say, is history.

Uber’s disruptive technology, explosive growth, and constant controversy make it one of the most fascinating companies to emerge over the past decade. The almost ten-year-old company soon grew to become the highest valued private startup company in the world. But with its rapid growth came many controversies that knocked down its valuation from a lofty $70 billion to $48 billion in its last funding round in Jan. 2018. On May 23, 2018, the company announced a new tender offer that would bump the company's value to $62 billion. Source: Investopedia.com

On my recent holiday I was able to use Uber and similar apps. The cars are clean, the vast majority of the drivers are polite and I no longer get ripped off when arriving at an airport.

Do you ever find yourself complaining about a service or situation?

Dr Joe vitality said that whenever you see a lot of people complaining about something there is always an opportunity there. I used to complain about not been able to find a taxi or getting ripped off, but I never saw the opportunity to do anything about it.

You may have seen the recent movie, The Greatest Showman, which was about BT Barnum. Barnum was not only a great showman, but it was someone that sort opportunities where other people only saw problems. In other words, he was a visionary.

Thousands of products and businesses have been started by people who wanted to solve a problem. I’m sure you have had ideas for products or services, but perhaps you were not able to follow them through. Sometimes our mind or that voice in our head tells us things like:

“That will never work”

“ someone else is probably doing it already”

Or,

“ it’s too difficult and you can’t do that”

Before you know it, you’ve talked yourself out of it and a few years later you find that someone else has “stolen” your idea!

By opening your mind to the opportunities around you, you t