Espresso 
The Sexbyfood blog about innovation, simplicity, integrity and tenacity.
Build Or Buy
A few years ago, Dutchman Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten sold his small company to a large company. We are a small company and we are not negotiating any acquisition deals. So, why does Boris' experience speak to me? Big groups lose agility. Execution of the most simple task becomes cotton-wooled. It's frustrating. Here is an extract from his Big Companies vs. Small companies story:
They replaced me as the CEO and I worked as an advisor for a few months. One day I was on the phone with the new CEO and he sounded depressed. I ask what the problem was and he told me he needed 4 photo’s for a mock-up brochure for a pitch on Wednesday. It was Thursday when he told me this. He told me he asked for the 4 photo’s and was told it would take 10 weeks to produce them [...]
So I called a photographer and asked him if he could take the pictures for me on Monday morning and what that would cost. He responded, "For you, I’ll do them for free" and I said "That is very kind but I’ll pay you 1 000 anyway." Then I called the best looking girl and guy I know and asked them if they would like to pose for me on Monday. I’d give them 100 for their trouble. So on Monday we did the photo-shoot, developed the photo’s, had them digitalized and I delivered them on Monday evening. Then I send them an invoice for 2 500 and kept the difference, about 1 000.
So, the next week I had a meeting with the CEO of my old company and he kept thanking me for the photo’s. He pitched their product to the client and the client was really impressed with the brochure and the pitch and had signed the contract right away. The CEO was so happy I started feeling guilty about the 1 000 I made on the deal.
But then I asked him, "So why would it take your company 10 weeks to get those photo’s?" He smiled and answered, "They would have had to assign a project manager to it, he would have had to go find a photographer, set-dresser, make up artist, modeling agency and location scout and they would have hired a stylist too." I was silent for a moment and then asked, "Well, how much would that all have cost?" and he answered, "between 35 000 and 45 000" [...[
There is also a lesson to be learned here. While we were negotiating the price for our company they told us, ‘This is a buy or build question for us. You do understand we have over 18 000 people working here so we could copy your concept within a day’. That sounded very real to us at that moment.
In reality however a big company can’t do anything in 24 hours. It will take a week just to get a meeting with the first person of the 100 people you need to reach and convince if you want to do anything. And then there are budgets, targets and other projects that take up all resources or seem to be more important.