Moonpig Founder: How I Built A $150 Million Business WITHOUT Sacrifice: Nick Jenkins

Sep 13, 2021 1h 8m 25 insights
Nick Jenkins, former CEO and founder of Moonpig, shares his unorthodox approach to entrepreneurship. He emphasizes decisiveness, risk acceptance, lean operations, and the importance of product quality and personal well-being over relentless hustle, offering a refreshing perspective on business success.
Actionable Insights

1. Cultivate Decisiveness

Develop the ability to make decisions even with incomplete information, choosing an option and moving forward. This trait is crucial for progress and avoiding analysis paralysis in business.

2. Embrace Risk, Don’t Fear Failure

Adopt an attitude where you are not overly worried about failing, viewing it as a learning opportunity rather than a personal setback. This intellectual courage is essential for continuous growth and action.

3. Simplify Business Operations

Keep all aspects of your business as simple as possible until complexity becomes absolutely necessary. This lean approach allows for efficient testing of hypotheses and conserves resources.

4. Test Hypotheses Leanly

Determine the minimum amount of money required to obtain statistically significant answers for critical business questions, such as customer acquisition costs. This prevents wasteful spending on unproven channels.

5. Prove Concepts with Minimal Investment

Before seeking substantial investment, demonstrate the validity of your core business hypothesis using the least possible capital. Concrete evidence of customer engagement and willingness to pay is highly persuasive to investors.

6. Protect Ideas by Being Best

Avoid being overly secretive about your business idea, as it will eventually need to be public. The most effective way to protect your concept is to strive to be the best and biggest in your market.

7. Improve Existing Ideas

Instead of always trying to invent something entirely new, focus on making an existing product or service incrementally better. This strategy leverages established market demand and significantly increases your chances of success.

8. Leverage Prior Industry Experience

Start a business in an industry where you have previous employment experience. This provides deep knowledge, valuable contacts, and an understanding of potential pitfalls and opportunities, enhancing your likelihood of success.

9. Embrace Initial Self-Delusion

Allow for a degree of self-delusion when starting a business, as being fully aware of all potential problems upfront might deter you. A fresh, less cynical perspective can be a significant advantage.

10. Prioritize Product Quality

Focus intensely on creating a genuinely good product that customers desire and enjoy. This drives organic growth through viral effects and repeat business, making all other marketing efforts more effective.

11. Continuously Polish Customer Journey

Treat the customer journey as a ’luge run’ that requires daily refinement. Constantly analyze metrics to identify points where customers get stuck or confused, then optimize these areas to improve retention and conversion.

12. Enhance Products with Technology

Seek opportunities where technology can fundamentally improve a product or service, rather than merely making an existing process cheaper. Personalization, for example, can create a superior offering that justifies a higher price.

13. Hire Completer-Finishers

While creative mavericks bring innovation, ensure you also hire ‘completer-finishers’ who reliably understand and deliver on tasks. This balances groundbreaking ideas with consistent execution.

14. Accommodate Creative Genius

Recognize that creative genius often comes with trade-offs like disorganization. Provide support, such as a good PA or a completer-finisher, to handle administrative tasks, allowing creatives to focus on their unique strengths.

15. Avoid Hustle Culture Trap

Do not sacrifice personal well-being, relationships, or social life for your business. Maintain reasonable working hours and encourage your team to recharge, as exhaustion hinders creativity and long-term sustainability.

16. Demand 100% Founder Focus

As an investor, insist that founders are entirely dedicated to a single venture. Multiple simultaneous startups often fail due to divided attention and a tendency to gravitate towards easier projects.

17. Embrace Challenges as Invigorating

View periods when your business faces significant adversity as potentially the most exciting and invigorating times. Pressure can inspire breakthrough solutions and foster resilience.

18. Develop Persuasion Skills

Cultivate the ability to persuade others of your ideas, a crucial skill in all aspects of life and business, from sales to team communication and investor pitches. Practice articulating your thoughts clearly and coherently.

19. Practice Active Communication

Accelerate your communication skills by regularly writing (e.g., a blog) or speaking (e.g., a podcast), even if no one is listening. This discipline forces coherent expression and improves clarity.

20. Communicate with Numbers & Visuals

Enhance your persuasive arguments by presenting ideas not only orally but also with compelling numbers, data models, and engaging visual presentations. Different people process information in various ways.

21. Define Success Holistically

Measure success not solely by wealth, but by being a ‘successful human being’—considering your contribution to society, how you treat employees, and the quality of your relationships. This prevents a competitive and ultimately unhappy mindset.

22. Find Joy in the Process

Derive true happiness and fulfillment in entrepreneurship from the process of building a business, continuous learning, collaborating with people, and creating something, rather than solely from the financial exit.

23. Continuously Learn and Grow

Embrace learning as a lifelong pursuit, independent of your financial status. Actively seek opportunities to expand your knowledge and skills, as this brings intrinsic satisfaction and personal development.

24. Seek Learning in Every Job

Even in uninteresting jobs, actively look for opportunities to learn how the business operates, how to perform tasks better, and what it takes to advance. This proactive approach can lead to significant career progression.

25. Manage Post-Success Expectations

After a significant achievement, be content with the possibility that you may not surpass that success in the same way. Judge future endeavors by their usefulness and personal fulfillment, rather than constantly trying to outdo past accomplishments.