Leicester City's Title, A Lesson In Entrepreneurship

"Everybody knows Leicester is a Champion!"


Leicester City are champions of the Barclays Premier League, the most watched competition on the planet. And they've got by with a little help from their friends.

What makes this win magical, if not unique, is the tremendous 5000:1 odds that Leicester City faced. What makes this win unforgettable is that fact that Leicester City F.C. is much like a bootstrapped startup that went on to become a unicorn.

Ranieri - Never Give Up, Even At 64

For all those 30 under 30s, 40 under 40s, and impatient people expecting instant-gratification, there's a wise old fellow, who - at 64 - defied the common narrative: NO, AMBITION DOES NOT DIE WITH AGE. CREATIVITY DOESN'T DIE WITH AGE. GUTS DON'T DISAPPEAR WHEN YOU'RE FIFTY.

Those who watched Ranieri lift Chelsea into the Champions league, and then disappear into the European wilderness, to the point when he was kicked out of his job managing Greece, will understand the magnitude of his achievement. Perhaps he was lucky. But he worked hard for decades, manufacturing this luck.
Bootstrap, bootstrap, bootstrap.




You can buy ~25% of Cristiano Ronaldo with this amount


Leicester is functional. Lots of meat, little gravy. No fancy names, nothing flashy; just great work-ethic. Amazing strategy, and deadly execution.

This is what great teams are made of. Get help from family, friends... a little bit of jugaad. And then work with what you have. So what if you don't have an Oil-baron or a Sheikh funding you? If you have a vision, and a strategy to get there, you will find a way. With or without money. And you will learn a lot more with limited resources.

A team for a strategy. A strategy for a team.

Now that Leicester are champions, and Uber is a unicorn, there are case-studies to tell us how they got there. You can pay $200,000 to learn about these success stories if you want. And then you can do an Uber for X or a Leicester for Y. Or you can take your chances, and be your own Leicester City.

But case-studies teach you a thing or two, with the benefit of hindsight. Look at this infographic, for example:




Call it genius or call it dumb-luck, but Leicester knew themselves well and created tactics to maximise their strengths and cover their weaknesses. If you have a rockstar-developer, focus on creating a world-class product, but if you have a killer sales-force, your focus oughtn't be on the product as much as on an on-ground strategy to build your business.

There is no strategy that fits all; there is no team that fits all. But there is a strategy-team combo that will see you through to the finish. Find that combo.
Believe, always.

Believe in what you're doing. There is no place for doubt.

You can get there only if you've no doubt you can. Yes, you can tell the media and your friends another story. But when you're alone in your room, sitting on your bed, thinking about your startup, you cannot doubt it. There is a way forward, and nothing else.

If all else fails, find yourself a God: a religious deity, a preacher, silence, Elon Musk, or Science. Or get yourself some Thai Monks to help you out.




These are lessons in Sports and Entrepreneurship, and we - at Khelfie - cannot wait to put these into practice!

#Fearless #LCFC